Marketing of supplements states that we need to buy these products to correct a deficiency or deficiencies. Once again, the strategy of supplement and vitamin marketing is, obviously, to sell products and make money. They will sell you on the fact that their product is better than eating whole foods and by not buying and taking their product you are deficient. Companies are responsible for ensuring that their products are safe but can often put new dietary supplements on the market without notifying the FDA. FDA has set rules for what these companies can put into their products. Unfortunately, these rules are not enforced. These companies make health claims regarding their products which are not backed up without any research.
In April of 1972, a supplement was produced called L-tryptophan. It was for weight loss and improved sleep., containing amino acids. Consumers soon found out that it caused a condition known as Eosinophilia-myalgia (EMS). EMS is an elevated count of white blood cells called the eosinophil. The symptoms were severe muscle and joint pain, hair loss, skin changes and coughing. It poisoned an estimated 5,000 Americans and caused 27 deaths by 1990. It was deemed as one of the worst public health disasters. It was banned by the FDA unless L-tryptophan went through a lengthy federal safety review, which never happened. The manufacturers of health food were made aware of the regulation but chose to ignore it. When I was researching this information I googled L-tryptophan and found that it is currently still being sold by companies like Amazon and Walmart.
Due to this incident and several lawsuits, a bill was passed (H.R. 2597 – Food, Drug, Cosmetic and Device Enforcement Amendments of 1991). This bill tightened the rules on how supplements were labeled, and what claims they could make. When this happened the Drug companies fought back. They put a lot of money into commercials, publishing books, and sent out mail flyers. All of this was to rally the consumers around their products. The supplement lobbyists targeted the lawmakers to counter it by passing their own law, which was more friendly to the supplement industry. Public Law 103-417 was passed Oct 25 of 1994. To give you a small section of this law, it states that “the Federal government should not take any actions to impose unreasonable regulatory barrier limiting or slowing the flow of safe products and accurate information to consumers.” “Dietary supplements are safe within a broad range of intake, and safety problems with supplements are relatively rare.”, “Supplements are not classified as medicine, it is classified as food.” On the labels of these supplements, you can find statements like “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.” The law was so friendly to the industry that put the burden on the government to prove that the product is wrong or adulterated, “render (something) poorer in quality by adding another substance, typically an inferior one”1 rather than the companies to prove that their products are safe for consumers.
According to John Hopkins Medicine, researchers have concluded that multivitamins do not reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, memory loss, or early death. They have also found out in prior studies that in high doses, vitamin E and beta-carotene are harmful. “Pills are not a shortcut to better health and the prevention of chronic diseases”2. The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has concluded that there is insufficient evidence to determine the balance of benefits and harms of supplements and multivitamins for the prevention of cardiovascular disease or cancer.
The only thing that makes sense is taking a vitamin or supplement if a person has a deficiency. Honestly, that doesn’t make sense either because we should just change our dietary intake to eat whole foods and reduce the deficiency. Sadly, for most people, it’s easier to just take a pill.
When you go to the doctor, he or she can prescribe a blood test to determine if you are lacking or deficient in any nutrients or minerals. But out of the 250 million Americans spend over 52 billion dollars on supplements every year that they probably don’t need. Yet they were convinced to take by multiple ad campaigns. Your body is a very complex machine. When it gets additional vitamins and minerals that it doesn’t need, they are simply passed through in the urine. Our hard-working dollars getting flushed, to put it lightly.
As of 2015, more than 23,000 people a year go to the emergency room due to supplements. On an average of those visits, over 2100 result in hospitalization. Since supplements are not strictly regulated, these health problems may be due, not because of the supplement itself, but from contamination within the supplement. In 2019, more than 300,000 containers of dietary supplements were seized due to having too much lead in the product. In 2018, researchers found that 92.1% of the tested supplements had different degrees of bacterial contamination and 86.8% had fungal contamination.
The FDA will only take action after something has gone wrong and the damage is already done. The FDA is small, has a very small budget, and does not have a lot of authority to regulate this massive market. When researchers examined some of these products, they found that some of these products didn’t even have what they say they have in them. No detectable amounts.
Over-the-counter supplemental are not always what they say they are. Hormones that we naturally produce, like melatonin, help induce sleep. In 2023, 287 children were admitted to the ICU for overdosing on supplements of melatonin. Five required ventilators and two had died. This has been an increase of over 500 % in the past decade. Unfortunately, this has proven that “we” need to ensure what we put into our bodies and to stop blindly relying on the supplement industry.
- Definitions from Oxford Languages
- Larry Appel, M.D., director of John Hopkins Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research
