The global nutritional product market is flourishing rapidly. Offerings range from tablets, capsules, liquids, and powders containing various forms of nutrition ranging from vitamins, minerals, herbals and live microbials.
Always choose supplements certified as standard by an independent third-party, to ensure they comply with specific quality and purity standards.
Dietary supplements
Dietary supplements are supplements made up of vitamins, minerals, herbs or other substances taken orally to add additional nutrition to one’s diet. Common supplements include fish oil, echinacea, melatonin calcium iron probiotics and probiotics which may help improve immune function, lower risk of colds reduce inflammation or assist weight loss.
NIH’s Office of Dietary Supplements offers impartial scientific information about dietary supplements. While not endorsing specific products or services, this office strongly suggests consulting a health care professional before using any dietary supplement.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees dietary supplements. This involves inspecting manufacturing facilities, reviewing new dietary ingredients before sale, inspecting imports to see if they meet U.S. requirements, responding to consumer and professional complaints as well as adverse event reports, as well as regulating health claims made on packaging or labels of supplements.
Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)
CAM refers to an umbrella of healing systems not typically considered part of standard Western medical treatment, including herbal remedies, acupuncture and mind-body therapies such as meditation and prayer. While conventional medicine typically targets physical sources of illness for treatment purposes, CAM practitioners take a more holistic approach that considers spiritual, mental, emotional genetic environmental and lifestyle influences on health as part of a person’s overall well being.
Citizens today are taking more responsibility than ever before for their health and wellbeing, making informed choices about therapy approaches they believe will yield optimal results for their particular illness, whether that means CAM or conventional medicine approaches. They want natural products which are safe and effective rather than unnecessary treatments, leading to increased demand for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
Quality control
Quality control (QC) is a practice used by companies to ensure they produce products of superior quality for customers, with the aim of decreasing defective product shipments to customers. Quality controls can be implemented across industries including pharmaceuticals, food production and manufacturing; techniques may differ depending on industry; however x-bar charts, Six Sigma analysis techniques 100% inspection mode or Taguchi methods may all be effective tools used by quality control personnel to measure quality in production facilities.
Employing a quality control system allows a company to increase product quality by creating an environment of excellence and training employees on job standards. They may also take advantage of statistical process control (SPC) methods, which examine production process from start to finish and look for any issues that affect overall quality. Other ways of improving quality include investing in a reliable lab and specifying who completes particular production activities – this way limiting room for error is eliminated completely.
Regulation
There are various supplements on the market with claims of disease-fighting properties, and while they typically fall into the food category, if sold to treat specific disorders or diseases they could fall under regulatory oversight as drugs.
Supplement manufacturers in the US must register with the Food and Drug Administration in order to produce and market dietary supplements, with this agency overseeing regulations regarding safety, labeling and recalls of such supplements.
Under European Community (EU) regulation (EC) No 1925/2006, dietary supplements are classified as food and not drugs. If certain substances added to food are expected to lead to increased consumption beyond what would normally be expected or pose a threat, or otherwise pose risks to consumers, then the EU Food Safety Authority (EFSA) may include them on a list of substances which must not be used and could lead to restrictions or scrutiny such as Ephedra species, Yohimbe or Hydroxyanthracene derivatives (such as Ephedra species), Yohimbe or Hydroxyanthracene derivatives among others.
