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Thermonol-XS, HydroxyCut, Stacker-3, Yellow Swarm. Passé.

Ventilean, Lean System-7, Energy Rush, Up Time, Energel, Ultra Energy Rush, Vita Rush, Up Your Gas Energy Booster, Zantrex-3, Hot-Rox. Now we're talking.

Adrenalin, BioBurn, Ultimate Orange, Diet Fuel, Ripped Fuel, Xenadrine-EFX. Hot stuff.

In 1994, the fine members of our 103rd Congress -- for reasons that escape me but have something to do with that hard-to-corral concept of freedom of speech (and money) -- passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (www.fda.gov/opacom/laws/dshea.html).

The purpose of this awful legislation was to redefine the meaning of dietary supplements. They came up with: "(A) product (other than tobacco) that is intended to supplement the diet that bears or contains one or more of the following dietary ingredients: a vitamin, a mineral, an herb or other botanical, an amino acid, a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total daily intake, or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combinations of these ingredients."

The key change was the addition of "an herb or other botanical" -- hardly a food. That meant the Food and Drug Administration no longer had jurisdiction to regulate these supplements. That opened the door to our current morass because manufacturers no longer had to demonstrate the efficacy or the safety of their products before selling them. The FDA was limited to after-market surveillance and had to shoulder the burden to prove risk.

Which gets us back to those cool names. Those in the first group contain ephedra, a stimulant long used for weight loss, whose active ingredient, ephedrine, is approved only for short-term use in asthma. Ephedra (ma-huang) has been associated with a remarkable number of serious adverse side effects, including sudden death.

The second group has high levels of caffeine (guarana), and I mean really high.

The third group offers synephrine (citrus aurantium), which acts like ephedrine and is being substituted by those oh-so-clever supplement purveyors since the FDA finally cracked down on herbal ephedra in July.

I'm going to leave this here because I've used up my 350 words, twice. I hope someone's listening.