Introduction
In order to write this book, I have spent a good deal of time investigating the dietary supplements business, and one thing that has surprised me on many occasions is how different people understand the word to mean different things.
So, let me start off by telling you exactly what this book is concerned with, and what it is not about!
It is not about food supplements, that is, ‘stuff’ that is added to food before you consume it in order to make it appear more wholesome or somehow ‘healthier’.
A more accurate name for this kind of food ‘supplement’ is, in fact, food ‘additive’.
However, you should be aware that many people do confusingly use the phrases ‘dietary’ and ‘food’ supplements interchangeably.
This book will not do so. Food supplements are added to food before you consume it, thus there is a certain element of your choice being removed.
Nor is it about dieting (losing weight through controlled calorie intake) as such either, although I will touch on certain aspects of this situation later, with particular reference as to where supplements fit into the weight loss ‘picture’.
What this book is about is the wide variety of tablets and pills that are commercially available in the market place, stuff that you buy at the local pharmacy or mall. It is about whether these products have any intrinsic value, whether they really have any benefits and if you really need to take them at all.
At first glance, it would certainly appear that they are something that you should consider using, as, according to HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_supplement" Wikipedia:
“A dietary supplement is intended to supply nutrients, (vitamins, minerals, fatty acids or amino acids) that are missing or not consumed in sufficient quantity in a person's diet. This category may also include herbal supplements which may have added health benefits.”
The same definition then goes on to explain that:
“In the United States, a dietary supplement is defined under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 as a product that is intended to supplement the diet and bears or contains one or more of the following dietary ingredients:
a vitamin
a mineral
an herb or other botanical (excluding tobacco)
an amino acid
a dietary substance for use by people to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake, or
a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any of the above
Furthermore, it must be:
intended for ingestion in pill, capsule, tablet, powder or liquid form
not represented for use as a conventional food or as the sole item of a meal or diet
labeled as a "dietary supplement"
So, that would appear to be very clear, except for one fact.
That is, when DSHEA came up with this definition, such supplements were still not widely approved in the USA at all!
In fact, when the highly influential ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’ (JAMA) had conducted its last in-depth review in the 1980’s, it had also concluded that people of normal health did not need to take multi-vitamins.
JAMA suggested that such things were not necessary because normal people could get all of the vitamins and minerals they needed from their average daily diet.
It was therefore fairly widely accepted that there was a certain degree of ‘quackery’ about the idea of dietary supplements, and the whole multi-million dollar industry that was springing up around them.
However, in 2002, in a total reverse of their previous stance, as a direct result of a comprehensive review of 38 years of scientific evidence, JAMA reported that the American Medical Association had changed its mind!
In fact, the 2002 reports, published on June 19th of that year, concluded that, given the diet of the average North American at that time, daily supplementation with a multiple vitamin (of exactly the type defined by the DHHEA eight years before) was a good idea!
This report went on to suggest that, whilst the average American diet was good enough to prevent diseases that are directly related to vitamin deficiency, such as scurvy, nevertheless, it was inadequate to support optimum health.
Thus, dietary supplements were recommended as a preventative measure against chronic medical ailments such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporosis!
So, what was the reasoning behind this extraordinary about-face reversal of one of the most widely respected medical authorities in the world?