Sports Supplements

What is actually worth buying

Anyone shopping bodybuilding supplements UK-side is choosing from a market where the great majority of products have no measurable effect on performance or body composition. The list with strong evidence is short: creatine, protein, caffeine and beta-alanine. This section holds 203 lines from £6 to £2,722, clustered near £57.

Bodybuilding supplements ranked by evidence

Supplement categories by strength of evidence

Evidence	Products	What they do
Strong	Creatine, protein, caffeine, beta-alanine	Real, replicated, modest effects
Moderate	Citrulline, vitamin D, omega-3	Situational or health rather than performance
Weak or none	Test boosters, most blends, BCAAs alongside adequate protein	No measurable effect in well-fed trained people

Creatine monohydrate is the best-studied supplement in sports nutrition and among the cheapest here — the £6 floor in this section is a creatine product. Expensive variants offer nothing monohydrate does not. See what creatine actually does.

Why blends disappoint

Proprietary blends list ingredients without individual doses, which conceals the recurring problem: each component appears far below the amount used in the studies cited on the label. A product containing fifteen ingredients in one capsule cannot contain an effective dose of more than one or two.

The working rule: if a label does not state the dose per ingredient, assume it is under-dosed. Disclosure would be a selling point if the numbers supported it.

What the price range tells you

The £6 to £2,722 spread in this section is not a quality gradient. The floor is creatine monohydrate, which is inexpensive because it is simple to produce and sold at scale. The ceiling is bulk or multi-pack presentations rather than a premium tier. Neither end tells you anything about efficacy — which is set by the ingredient and its dose, not by what the tub cost.

What the 203 lines actually contain

The section spans protein powders, creatine, pre-workout blends, amino acids and a long tail of single-ingredient and blended products. Six child categories organise it further. In practice a small number of those lines account for most of what is worth buying, which is the honest summary of this entire market rather than a comment on our range specifically.

The contamination risk

Supplements are not assessed for content before sale, and contamination with banned substances is documented — shared production lines, ingredient sourcing, cross-contact. Under strict liability an inadvertent positive is still the athlete’s responsibility.

If you compete, use only products with batch-level third-party certification and verify the batch number rather than the brand. We do not hold certification data for the lines stocked here, and that absence is itself the answer if certification matters to you.

Where to spend

Creatine and protein cover most of what supplementation can realistically achieve. Caffeine before training and beta-alanine if your events sit in the one-to-four-minute range covers nearly all the rest. That is a modest monthly cost, and the remainder of this market competes for money that would generally do more as food.

The full evidence review is in what actually has evidence, and the brands in the supplement brands piece.

The honest summary

Four products work, a handful more work situationally, and the rest of a very large market does not. That is an uncomfortable thing for a retailer to write and it is what the evidence supports.

Frequently asked questions

Which supplements actually work?
Creatine, protein, caffeine and beta-alanine have strong evidence. Most of the rest have no measurable effect in people already eating adequately.

Are cheap supplements worse?
Not necessarily. Creatine monohydrate is cheap because it is simple to produce, not because it is inferior to expensive variants.

Do I need BCAAs?
Not if protein intake is adequate — you are already consuming them. Their use case is fasted training or genuinely low intake.

Are these safe for drug-tested athletes?
Not automatically. Contamination is documented and strict liability applies. Only batch-level certification meaningfully reduces the risk.

What is the single best purchase?
Creatine monohydrate, on evidence per pound spent. Nothing else in this category comes close on that measure.