April 5, 2017 — A remarkable collaboration is taking shape to set a higher bar for the quality and safety of dietary supplements. This week in Washington the Dietary Supplement Quality Collaborative (DSQC) brought together people from the supplement industry with consumer advocates, health professionals, and scientific organizations. This group has been taking shape over the last year. The shared […]
January 31, 2017 — Dietary supplements live in a unique regulatory space. That space lies somewhere between food and drugs. Sometimes that’s just fine. Vitamins and minerals that your body really needs can be well-regulated for purity and safety. But therapeutic agents also squeeze into this space. For example, glucosamine and chondroitin supplements advertise benefits like “joint mobility.” People with […]
October 20, 2016 — To understand the potential for harm from herbal and dietary supplements (HDS) for weight loss, consider this observation recently published in Hepatology: HDS-induced liver injury now accounts for 20% of cases of hepatotoxicity in the United States based on research data. The major implicated agents include anabolic steroids, green tea extract, and multi-ingredient nutritional supplements (MINS). This observation […]
February 21, 2016 — Whether or not Hillary Clinton’s campaign’s momentum is real, it’s looking like Hillary’s hot peppers are gaining a little momentum in the scientific literature. A new review in the International Journal of Obesity by Angelo Tremblay and colleagues concludes: The available evidence summarized in this paper supports the idea that capsaicinoid consumption may facilitate body weight management. This effect is […]
November 21, 2015 — How can chocolate pills make sense to anyone? But apparently they do. Bloomberg reports that chocolate extracts sold for heart health have grown twice as fast as dark chocolate. CocoaVia, a dietary supplement of flavanols extracted from cocoa, is ringing up sales that have tripled in the last year. Someone is seriously confused. Food is food, medicine is […]
October 22, 2015 — As a matter of policy, FDA tolerates magic weight loss scams. They really don’t have much choice. Unlike prescription or over-the-counter drugs, FDA was effectively stripped of the power to regulate any claims of effectiveness for dietary supplements by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. Supplement marketers can make any claims they […]
April 9, 2015 — Even knowing the complicated history of dietary supplements for weight loss, current reports of FDA foot dragging on dangerous supplements are nothing short of shocking. In an academic journal this week, a group of scientists revealed that dietary supplements containing an amphetamine isomer are still on the market — two years after FDA first knew […]
March 18, 2015 — Maybe you’ve heard of glucomannan — a so-called “super fiber” that Dr. Oz hypes as “nature’s skinny sponge.” Maybe you read a systematic review and meta-analysis in Nutrition of the effect of glucomannan on body weight that concluded it “may help reduce body weight.” As it turns out, that analysis was wrong. The study was […]
January 5, 2014 — Bogus weight loss products and other dietary supplements — unfettered by regulatory approval for safety and efficacy — have been linked to a spike in liver injuries. And more trouble lies ahead for dietary supplement makers. On Tuesday the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will unveil a new effort to shut down deceptive advertising for bogus […]
