Healthy dietary habits and food choices, a part of lifestyle, are recognized as major environmental factors for the prevention of non-communicable chronic diseases over the life course; their modifiable features promise a reduced socio-economic global burden load in aging societies. To better help satisfy nutritional needs, the use of dietary supplements has also become a common practice. Initially, this practice was acknowledged to avoid deficiencies in some essential micronutrients and their adverse health consequences, and its use was not questioned. This practice seems now to have acquired the role of comforting consumers facing an ever increasing and nutritionally inadequate food supply.
Therefore, dietary supplements use is now a form of food behavior, and consumers, manufacturers, and regulatory officers have to consider and evaluate their safety, efficacy, and quality. However, the concerned parties appear to assign different priorities to these three requirements, according to their needs and expectations. To complicate the picture further, the definition of dietary supplements has not yet reached a consensus worldwide. These issues have been extremely well documented by Dwyer and colleagues in a recent review published in Nutrients. This review comprehensively explained the major challenges in the field of dietary supplements, from the need for a standardized definition to the evolution of quality assessment in time and different countries, the existing legislation that should be applied for groups of molecules or single molecules, the evolving regulatory landscape, the legitimate expectations of consumers about safety, quality, and efficacy.
Source: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/2/502