You should probably not buy gray-market peptides and inject them into your body, unless you already are and it’s going great for you. In other body news: There is no such thing as “trimester zero.” Also, we learn about the history and etymology behind pumpernickel bagels.
HEALTH
Should We All Be Shooting Ourselves Full of Peptides?
They’re underregulated and sketchy, but they might make us hot.
Today we’re blessed with an Ezra Marcus story about the rise of peptides. What are peptides, you ask? “Peptides are the building blocks of proteins, consisting of between two and 100 amino acids linked together. They occur naturally in the body and affect the endocrine system, helping to regulate metabolism, mood, and energy.” Okay, sounds like it would be fun and good to inject ourselves with some extra peptides, especially when so many people are getting skinnier, tanner, hornier, and more ripped with the aid of naturopathic doctors who prescribe them in compounded form for as little as $250 for a six-week supply. Ezra went guinea-pig mode and shot himself up with NAD+ for this story. “Half an hour later, on my couch at home, I felt a warm glow spread through my limbs, sort of like a milder version of the rush produced by Adderall. I pulled out my laptop and started writing some emails.” Damn, hook me up with that juice, stat! I also need to write some emails! But wait, haha, not so fast …
Rina Dukor is the co-founder of a company called BioTools, which makes molecular-testing equipment used by everyone from pharmaceutical giants to federal agencies. Recently, she has been working with a peptide-testing start-up called Finnrick, launched in 2025 by the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Michael Carter. People can send in their peptides and Finnrick will test them for purity and label accuracy. It’s sort of like a for-profit à la carte FDA. “Everyone has a peptide guy,” Carter told the San Francisco Standard. “What people need is transparent information.”
Nearly 30 percent of the peptides tested by Finnrick are either mislabeled, under- or overdosed, or contaminated with toxins or foreign bacteria. “We’ve also seen peptides where it says ‘semaglutide’ and it’s actually Retatrutide or there is no peptide at all,” Dukor told me. She’s particularly concerned about untested products coming from China. Many of the Chinese peptide shipments have COAs, or certificates of authenticity, from testing companies; these are tests showing a given batch of a substance is pure. But the COAs often tell consumers nothing about whether the manufacturer has put the right amount of a substance in a vial. “They might tell you it’s five milligrams. They might put two milligrams. They might put 15 milligrams,” Dukor said. “But it might look the same; it’s just a lot of white powder.”
Still, the promise of peptides is hard to resist. I won’t spoil the ending of this piece for you, but I’ll just say that I appreciate Ezra’s commitment.
HEALTH, AGAIN
It’s Never Too Early to Start Freaking Out About Your Pregnancy
Unless, perhaps, you should really stop freaking out about your pregnancy.
Oh no, TikTok and Instagram influencers are out here trying to convince women who aren’t even pregnant yet that they need to be doing the most to influence the health of their still-hypothetical fetuses, citing something they’re calling “Trimester Zero.” Is this a crock of hooey?
Of course, your health before conception matters. But the doctors I spoke to said the things that actually make a difference are far more basic. You should take a prenatal with folic acid and avoid smoking and drug use. You should also make sure any chronic conditions, like high blood pressure or diabetes, are under control, and get up to date with vaccines and STI testing. Most of these are things doctors would recommend to everyone, not just women planning to get pregnant. And even if you go out of your way to micromanage your nutrients and rid your home of toxins, there’s still no guarantee you’ll get pregnant.
Put down the liver and, for the love of all that’s holy, stop seeing “functional medicine doctors,” people!!
FOOD
Save the Endangered Pumpernickel Bagels!
The complex flavor is dying out, even as bagels themselves are having a moment
.The pumpernickel bagel, it turns out, is like one of those beloved old shops that you never actually visit but assume will just be around forever, until the day when you walk by and there’s a TD Bank there. Flashy new bagel shops like Gertie’s, Apollo, and PopUp only have basic-bitch flavors like plain, sesame, and everything. What gives?
There are plenty of theories about why demand is dying for pumpernickel bagels: The dark color doesn’t photograph well, the flavor is too overpowering for most sandwiches, younger customers just prefer a blander bagel, or people have simply forgotten about them. It probably doesn’t help matters that the name, in German, translates to “a goblin’s fart.”
Elsewhere in this piece, we learn that the humble brown bagel turns out to have a complex history — it’s a combination of two Jewish food cultures intersecting, the 18th-century innovation that was the bagel colliding with the 19th-century wave of German Jewish immigrants who brought dark rye breads with them to the new world. This paved the way for later innovations, like the muffin-bagel hybrid that is “blueberry,” and other abominations we shall not speak of here. Suffice it to say that you can feel good about ordering a pumpernickel bagel the next time you have the opportunity to do so knowing that you’re doing your part to preserve culinary history.
Click Your Way Out
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Dwight Garner comes for the king (George Saunders) and does not miss.
Little-known fact: Don DeLillo is a hockey romance author.
Gonna need an NYMag-subsidized NAD+ shot to make it through the rest of this week.
Pumpernickel bagels for life!!
Thank you for the article. I appreciate New York Magazine for all your stories and reviews. The piece on peptides was impressive because the writer went so far as to try them to get the full story.