WASHINGTON—Saying that keeping an eye on the billion-dollar industry probably couldn’t hurt, the Food and Drug Administration reportedly figured aloud Thursday that sooner or later it would get around to regulating supplements with names like Black Widow and Yellow Demon. “I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea at some point to assess the safety of products like energy pills that have a highly venomous spider on the logo and promise to ‘give your system a jolt’ once we get a few things off our plate,” said FDA official Donald Reece, adding that when they had the time, the agency’s chemists should really give a quick once-over to currently unregulated dietary products featuring the words “carnage,” “napalm,” “or “Hemo-Rage” written on the package in bold, fluorescent letters. “Now that I think about it, it probably makes sense to do at least a cursory study on any substance that consists of wholly untested chemical compounds and 6,000 times the recommended daily allotment of certain rare minerals. And if the container has the letter ‘X’ formed by two intersecting lightning bolts or a grimacing skull with glowing eyes, that might be a good reason to inspect it one of these days.” Reece, who confirmed that the FDA intends to look into these products eventually, said that a high-profile teenage athlete overdosing on a bodybuilding supplement named something like Doomsday Assault could get the ball rolling a lot faster.

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