Gym Bro's Pre-Workout Supplement Contains More Ingredients Than the Periodic Table

A pre-workout supplement favored by gym influencer Trent Vascularity has been found to contain 127 listed ingredients, exceeding the 118 elements on the periodic table by nine, a fact that has drawn the attention of both the supplement industry and the chemistry department at UC San Diego, which has been unable to identify 14 of the listed compounds. 'The ingredient list is four inches long in six-point font,' said Dr. Karen Molecule, a food chemist at UCSD who analyzed the product at the request of a consumer watchdog group. 'We recognized most of the ingredients. Standard stuff: caffeine, beta-alanine, citrulline, creatine. Then we got to ingredient 87, which is listed as DiHydro-NeuroPump Matrix, and our database returned nothing. Our graduate students spent a week on it. It does not appear to be a molecule.' The supplement, called OBLITERATE by Apex Nutrition Labs, retails for $59.99 per container and promises 'explosive energy, tunnelvision focus, skin-splitting pumps, and a rush that redefines your relationship with gravity.' Its label lists 127 ingredients organized into seven 'proprietary matrices,' none of which disclose individual dosages. 'That's the beauty of a proprietary blend,' said Apex Nutrition Labs CEO Derek Scoop. 'We don't have to tell you how much of each ingredient is in there. We just have to list them. Are some of the ingredient names... aspirational? Maybe. But every one of them is in the tub.' Vascularity, who promotes the product to his 1.2 million Instagram followers, says he takes two scoops before every workout. 'Two scoops of OBLITERATE and I can see through time,' he said in a recent video. 'My veins have veins. My pump has a pump. I am 254 ingredients of pure performance.' Dr. Molecule's analysis found that the supplement's primary active component, by weight, is caffeine, present at approximately 400 milligrams per serving -- roughly equivalent to four cups of coffee. 'Most of the perceived effect is caffeine,' Dr. Molecule said. 'The remaining 126 ingredients are either present in negligible amounts, redundant with each other, or, in the case of the 14 unidentifiable compounds, possibly just words.' Apex Nutrition Labs has stood by the product. 'Every ingredient serves a purpose,' Scoop insisted. 'Some serve a biochemical purpose. Some serve a branding purpose. Both are valid.'