Dietary supplements may contain harmful or undesirable substances such as pesticides or heavy metals. Contaminants may be present before a substance is harvested for use as a dietary supplement or may be introduced during processing and packaging. For example, coral calcium, a dietary supplement said to contain remnants of living coral reefs, may contain significant [...]
Dietary supplements are natural substances that may contain variable amounts of active and inactive ingredients. These amounts depend on several factors, including the age and specific part of the plant, the composition of the soil in which it was grown, the time of year it was harvested, and how the substance was processed and stored. [...]
Dietary supplements may act differently in different people. As noted by Christine Lewis-Taylor, former director of the FDA’s Office of Nutritional Products, Labeling, and Dietary Supplements, “one man’s dose can be another man’s poison.” An individual’s genes and health status help to explain this difference. Nutritional genomics and metabalomics are growing areas of research that [...]
