Dietary Supplements
How Did Dietary Supplements Achieve Their Status?
In 1994, federal legislation—the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), passed after intensive lobbying by the supplements industry—essentially removed dietary supplements from most regulation by the FDA. Dietary...
Dietary Supplements: The ABCs of GMPs
Critics of the industry have long warned that you don’t really know what you’re getting when you buy supplements. Over the years, there have been numerous reports of products...
Dietary Supplements: The Private Watchdogs
Some supplements carry “seals of approval” from independent certification
programs, which claim to keep tabs on the supplements industry.
ConsumerLab.com. The best-known certification program comes from this private company, which has...
Dietary Supplements: The Overmarketing of Antioxidants
It’s hard to remember, but not too long ago few people had ever heard of an “antioxidant.” Today the word pops up on the labels of countless dietary supplements—and...
Dietary Supplements: We Can Do Better
Clearly, better laws for supplements are needed. Proposals to strengthen DSHEA come up periodically, but they never get far in Congress. It is unreasonable that medications (prescription and over-the-counter)...
