While vitamins and nutritional or dietary supplements can be beneficial to your health, they can also involve health risks. Notably, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not have the authority to review dietary supplement products for safety and effectiveness before they are marketed. And with more than 90,000 different supplements on the market, it can be confusing to understand what is safe and what is not.1
Why don’t we give our public Food and Drug Administration the authority to review vitamins and supplements for effectiveness?
Questions
How did we get to this point of completely unregulated supplements market with no guidance for consumers to navigate supporting their health?
The debate in the dietician and nutrition communities about whether external/additional vitamins and supplements are necessary for our health or not?
In a perfect world, a whole foods diet could provide all of our nutrient needs. But in a world of depleted soils, perhaps our food no longer provides all of our nutrient needs. See: soil health
FDA Resources to Review
- Dietary Supplements
- Information on Select Dietary Supplement Ingredients and Other Substances
- FDA 101: Dietary Supplements