What is the definition of a supplement?
Dietary supplements are what we often call nutritional products, health products, and tonics. However, in foreign countries, dietary supplements are different from nutritional products, and nutritional products cover a wider range.
American adults use dietary supplements as part of their daily health management. Among them, vitamins and minerals are the most commonly consumed categories, with about 76% of the population having used them; the second most popular category is special nutritional supplements, with a usage rate of about 40%; there are also herbal and plant extract products, with a usage rate of 39%; sports nutritional supplements have a usage rate of 28%; and weight management supplements have a usage rate of 17%. From the specific categories, multivitamins, vitamin D, and vitamin C are the top three categories of consumption.
In 2003, NSF issued the NSF/ANSI 173 dietary supplement and raw material certification standard.
In response to changes in the US market, NSF also issued the NSF/ANSI 455 standard in 2018, which involves good manufacturing practices for dietary supplement manufacturers and is also the current good manufacturing practices in the United States.
Dietary supplements include vitamins, minerals, proteins, amino acids, botanicals, enzymes and herbs. They are called food supplements in the EU. my country stipulates that the raw materials of dietary nutritional supplements must be essential nutrients for the human body, or biologically active substances with relatively clear structure-activity relationships. Dietary supplements are usually sold in the form of capsules, powders, tablets, soft gels, soft candies, extracts, teas and beverages.
The European Food Supplement Association (FSE) commissioned Ipsos to conduct a survey on the use of food supplements among 13,200 adult consumers in 14 EU countries. 88% of the respondents have used food supplements. 46% of consumers have taken vitamin D in the past 12 months, followed by vitamin C (36%), magnesium (33%), multivitamin/mineral supplements (29%) and Omega 3/fish oil (19%).
What does a dietary supplement do?
People who take dietary supplements tend to have adequate nutrient levels in their bodies. People with high blood folate levels are significantly more likely to take dietary supplements than those with low folate levels. Similarly, vitamin C, folic acid, iron, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12 all showed the same trend.
The "Stockholm Heart Epidemiology Project" conducted by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed that compared with respondents who did not take dietary supplements, respondents who took dietary supplements had a lower risk of myocardial infarction, with a 21% reduction in male respondents and a 34% reduction in female respondents.
