Infantry Labs: the Missouri SARM brand with military ranks for names, in the FDA's 2017 letters

Who they are, and what the record says

Infantry Labs was a supplement brand from the St. Louis area of Missouri. The FDA addressed its 2017 warning letter to "Infantry Labs, LLC" in O'Fallon, Missouri, from its "Detroit District Office".[1] In the federal suit that followed, Infantry Labs, LLC filed its own answer and its own corporate disclosure, naming no parent company.[2] The docket also lists a second company, Infantry Labs STL, LLC, as a defendant that never appeared.[2] No trademark under the name was ever filed.[3]

The brand's web store was at infantrylabsllc.com. The archive holds one copy of it with content, from January 2017. Its title read "Infantry Labs | O'Fallon MO", its phone number "636-385-6868", and its footer "Infantry Labs | St. Louis, MO".[4] The menu offered "Become a Retailer" and "Sponsored Athletes".[4] Its About text said "Infantry Labs serves the brave men and women that make up our armed forces", and promised to support them with "not only product royalties" but cause organisations as well.[4]

Figure 1. January 2017, the only archived copy of the store. The phone number at the top is the one 1 Nation Nutrition later printed. [4]

By August 2017 the domain showed only a hosting company's error page.[5] From January 2018 to at least December 2021 the archive records the address as a permanent redirect to 1nationnutrition.com.[6][7] Who that is comes below.

What it sold

Every product had a military rank for a name, and five of the seven had a drug code in brackets. The January 2017 home page listed "The Officer (MK-2866)", "The Lieutenant (LGD-4033)", "Ranking Officer (RAD140)", "The General (GW-501516)", "The Major (MK677)", "The Medic (PCT)" and a "Triple Threat".[4]

Figure 2. The product list. Five of the seven names carry a drug code in brackets. [4]

The codes are the research names of drugs. MK-2866 is ostarine and LGD-4033 is ligandrol; the FDA letter confirms that the labels of The Officer and The Lieutenant named those two compounds by their chemical names.[1] RAD140 is RAD-140, another SARM. GW-501516 is cardarine and MK-677 is ibutamoren; neither is a SARM. For these three the archive kept the product name and nothing else: no label, no ingredient list, no photograph. The dossier records them as what the listing called them. "PCT" is gym shorthand for post-cycle therapy, the products taken after a steroid or SARM cycle; no compound was named for The Medic.

Figure 3. What the codes stand for. Drawn from the archived home page and the FDA letter; nothing here was tested. [4]

The marketing on the page was two customer testimonials. One said, of four weeks on The Major, "Gained some good size and some noticeable strength gains". The other used the Ranking Officer with The General: "I have more energy, I don't feel as sore all the time".[4] The rest of the claims are known from the FDA, which quoted the website and labels: The Officer was "Great for strength", "Great for lean mass gains" and "Great for body recomposition".[1]

The FDA letter, 2017

On 23 October 2017 the FDA wrote to Infantry Labs about The Officer and The Lieutenant. Their distribution, it said, "violates the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act".[1] The products "are labeled as dietary supplements; however, these products do not meet the definition of a dietary supplement".[1] Ostarine and LGD-4033 had been authorised for investigation as new drugs before anyone sold them as supplements, so the law excludes them from the definition. The Panther Sports Nutrition dossier walks through the same reasoning in its own letter, sent the same day.

Figure 4. The FDA's letter of 23 October 2017, heading and opening paragraph. The names and addresses of the two recipients are cropped out here; they are on the FDA's page. [1]

The letter rests the "drug" finding on the company's own words: "Your website, where you take orders for The Officer (MK-2866) and Lieutenant (LDG-4033), and product labels include claims" about building muscle and strength.[1] A product meant to change the body's structure or function is a drug; one not generally recognised as safe is a new drug; and one not safe without a doctor's supervision is a prescription drug, which cannot carry directions a layman could follow. So the FDA called the two products unapproved new drugs and misbranded drugs.

Figure 5. The claims the FDA quoted from the website and labels. They are why it called the products drugs. [1]

On safety the letter says: "Life threatening reactions, including liver toxicity, have occurred in people taking products containing SARMs." And: "SARMs also have the potential to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke."[1] It asked for a written answer "Within fifteen (15) working days of receipt of this letter".[1] We found no close-out letter and no later FDA action under the name.[8]

The letter went to two addresses. One copy was for Infantry Labs, LLC; the other was for the same two recipients at "1 Nation Nutrition", also in O'Fallon.[1]

On 31 October the FDA announced that it had "recently issued warning letters to Infantry Labs, LLC, IronMagLabs and Panther Sports Nutrition for distributing products that contain SARMs".[9] IronMag's letter is told in the IronMag dossier, and how SARMs came to follow the designer steroids onto supplement shelves in the deep dive on designer steroids.

Figure 6. Eight days later the FDA named the company in public, first of three. [9]

The competitor's suit, 2017 to 2018

Three weeks before the FDA's letter, a competitor had already sued. On 3 October 2017 Nutrition Distribution, the Arizona supplement company behind the dossier on its eighty-odd false-advertising suits, filed a complaint for false advertising under the Lanham Act in the federal court in St. Louis.[2] The defendants were One Nation Nutrition St. Peters, LLC, 1 Nation Nutrition Holdings, LLC, Infantry Labs, LLC, Infantry Labs STL, LLC and unnamed others.[2]

What the complaint said is known through the judge's summary of it. Nutrition Distribution alleged that the defendants "unlawfully advertised, marketed, distributed, and offered for sale products containing Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMs)", which it described as drugs that "are synthetic drugs intended to have similar effects as illegal anabolic steroids".[10] It said they promoted them "on a Facebook page", and that "SARMS are not legal as ingredients in any type of dietary supplement".[10] These were a competitor's allegations, made to win damages, and no court ever ruled on whether they were true.

Figure 7. What the competitor alleged, in the court's summary. These are allegations; the case settled before any finding. [10]

The two companies that appeared fought together. On 28 November 2017 1 Nation Nutrition Holdings, LLC and Infantry Labs, LLC filed one motion to dismiss, through one lawyer.[2] The motion argued that the complaint did not say how Nutrition Distribution had been harmed. On 18 December the judge denied it, finding the injury pleaded well enough; whether the defendants had falsely marketed anything "is more appropriately addressed pursuant to a motion for summary judgment".[10]

Figure 8. December 2017. The two businesses moved together, through one lawyer, to have the case thrown out. [10]

Figure 9. Motion denied, 18 December 2017. The court ruled only that the claim could go forward. [10]

Both companies answered. The court set a jury trial for 4 March 2019.[2] It never came. On 13 April 2018 Nutrition Distribution filed a notice of settlement, and on 8 May a notice of voluntary dismissal was filed in the names of all three companies, Nutrition Distribution, 1 Nation Nutrition Holdings and Infantry Labs. The court closed the case on 9 May 2018.[2] The terms are not on the docket.

Figure 10. The suit, entry by entry, from the court's docket. Settled seven months in; no terms on file. [2]

1 Nation Nutrition

The record ties Infantry Labs to a retailer, 1 Nation Nutrition, at four points. The FDA sent one letter to both businesses, in the same town.[1] The suit named both, one lawyer acted for both, and the two filed their motion and their dismissal together.[2] The phone number on the Infantry Labs store in January 2017, 636-385-6868, is the number on the 1 Nation Nutrition site in December 2017.[4][11] And from January 2018 infantrylabsllc.com sent its visitors to 1nationnutrition.com; the old store's paths, down to the product image files of The Officer and The Lieutenant, turn up in the archive's index under the retailer's domain.[6][7][12]

Figure 11. Four documents, one operation. Drawn from the sources cited in the text; no individual is named. [2]

1 Nation Nutrition's site described supplement shops in O'Fallon and Wentzville, "OFallon and Wentzville Nutrition", "US Marine Veteran locally owned and operated".[11] In December 2017 its home page advertised GritMuscle protein and shared articles about CBD; it listed no SARMs.[11] The military theme of Infantry Labs, and its promise of royalties to service causes, fit a retailer that sold itself to veterans; the record shows the shared phone, the shared letter and the shared defence. Each company told the court it had no parent company, so the record does not show one owning the other.[2]

Figure 12. December 2017, the retailer's site. Same phone number as Infantry Labs; no SARMs on the page. [11]

What buyers report

Nothing we could find outside the company's own page. Searches of the Reddit archive for "infantry labs" in six subreddits on SARMs, steroids and supplements returned posts about soldiers but none about the brand.[13] The only buyer voices are the two testimonials the store printed.[4]

Lab results

The store published none that the archive kept. The archived addresses on the domain include no certificate, lab or test page.[7] We found no test of any Infantry Labs product by a laboratory, a regulator or a buyer.

Regulatory and legal

• FDA warning letter, MARCS-CMS 535333, 23 October 2017, over The Officer (MK-2866) and The Lieutenant (LGD-4033), as unapproved new drugs and misbranded drugs, sent to Infantry Labs, LLC and to 1 Nation Nutrition.[1] Named in the FDA's In Brief of 31 October 2017.[9]
• Nutrition Distribution, LLC v. One Nation Nutrition St. Peters, LLC, E.D. Mo. 4:17-cv-02519, filed 3 October 2017 under the Lanham Act over SARMs advertising; motion to dismiss denied 18 December 2017; settled and voluntarily dismissed in May 2018.[2][10]

Figure 13. The whole record fits in seventeen months. [1]

Still open

• The state record. The companies' Missouri filings (formation, status, registered agent) for Infantry Labs, LLC, Infantry Labs STL, LLC, 1 Nation Nutrition Holdings, LLC and One Nation Nutrition St. Peters, LLC were not read for this page.
• What was in the bottles. No laboratory result for any product was found, and no label survives for RAD140, GW-501516 or MK-677.
• What the complaint said in full, and the terms of the settlement. Only the judge's order is in the court mirror.[10]
• The Facebook page the complaint refers to. No archived copy was found.[10]
• Whether the products were sold after 2017. The FDA letter cites a website taking orders; the only archived copy of the store is from January 2017, and nothing in 1 Nation Nutrition's archived catalogue names the Infantry Labs line.[4][12]

Changes

• 2026-10-12: first version.

References

1. FDA warning letter to Infantry Labs LLC, MARCS-CMS 535333, 2017-10-23 — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
2. Docket, Nutrition Distribution, LLC v. One Nation Nutrition St. Peters, LLC, E.D. Mo. No. 4:17-cv-02519, filed 2017-10-03, terminated 2018-05-09 (RECAP) — Free Law Project RECAP, mirrored by the Internet Archive
3. USPTO trademark search: owner names beginning 'infantry', and the wordmark 'infantry labs', run 2026-10-12 (no supplement marks) — U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
4. infantrylabsllc.com home page, archived 2017-01-03 — Wayback Machine
5. infantrylabsllc.com hosting error page, archived 2017-08-13 — Wayback Machine
6. infantrylabsllc.com, archived 2018-01-09 (redirect) — Wayback Machine
7. Wayback Machine index of infantrylabsllc.com, 2017 to 2023 — Wayback Machine
8. Web and FDA site searches for a close-out letter to Infantry Labs, run 2026-10-12 (none found) — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
9. FDA In Brief: FDA warns against using SARMs in body-building products, 2017-10-31 (archived 2017-11-01) — U.S. Food and Drug Administration (Wayback Machine)
10. Memorandum and order denying the motion to dismiss, Nutrition Distribution, LLC v. 1 Nation Nutrition Holdings, LLC, E.D. Mo. No. 4:17-cv-02519, Dkt 12, 2017-12-18 — CourtListener (RECAP)
11. 1nationnutrition.com home page, archived 2017-12-08 — Wayback Machine
12. Wayback Machine index of 1nationnutrition.com, 2017 to 2025 — Wayback Machine
13. Reddit archive searches for 'infantry labs' in r/sarms, r/Sarmssourcetalk, r/prohormones, r/moreplatesmoredates, r/steroids and r/supplements, run 2026-10-12 (no posts about the brand) — Arctic Shift