Worried About Dietary Supplements?

Dietary supplements are amazingly popular health items -- a fact which is raising eyebrows among researchers who say many safety questions remain unanswered. The supplement market may reach $14 billion annually by 2002, up from $6.5 billion in 1996, and unlike drugs, the Food and Drug Administration does not tightly regulate these compounds.

Dr. Steven Zeisel, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says the government should protect the public by creating a special supplement category called "nutraceuticals" and requiring that such products be proven safe before being sold.

Writing in the journal Science, Zeisel says it's wrong to think that because dietary supplements are natural, such products therefore are safe. He says supplements containing dosages greater than consumers would normally be exposed to need to be proven safe. He admits that might mean products will take longer to get to market -- and that some may not be sold at all.

Zeisel says, "This seems a reasonable cost to protect the public health." There have been numerous instances when the FDA has asked for a voluntary recall of supplements after reports of people getting sick and Zeisel says when products are quickly pushed to market there is a greater danger of that happening.