Nutritional supplements are a broad category that describes a group of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbal supplements, hormones like melatonin and some steroids. The Food and Drug Administration requires manufacturers of dietary supplements to be responsible for ensuring their product is safe before it hits the market. The FDA’s role is to take action against an unsafe dietary supplement product after it reaches the market. Because the Food and Drug Administration classifies dietary supplements as foods, and not as drugs, the oversight for supplements is different than for prescription drugs.

A nutritional supplement is a product that is intended to supplement the diet and contain any 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 also conform to the following criteria:

It is intended for ingestion in pill, capsule, tablet, powder or liquid form.
It is not to be represented for use as a conventional food or as the sole item of a meal or diet.
It is labeled as a dietary supplement.
While hormones are not included in the above list, some hormones are labeled as “dietary supplements”.

More On: What are Nutritional Supplements?

Technorati Tags: nutritional supplements, nutritional products, nutritional supplement, nutritional value, nutritionist

Quickly bookmark Understanding Nutritional Supplements at:                                                

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Health & Beauty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.