Dietary supplements

Abstract

Dietary supplements are defined in the US Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) as a product (other than tobacco) that includes one or more of the following dietary ingredients: a vitamin, a mineral, an herb or other botanical, an amino acid, any other substance used to supplement the diet by increasing total dietary intake, or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any of the above. Dietary supplements are considered a special category of food and are not regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration as drugs (though they cannot make any therapeutic claim). Nutraceuticals (foods that produce some type of physiological benefit) and functional foods (foods 'enriched' to provide a physiological benefit that the unmodified food cannot) are not considered to be dietary supplements. The toxicity of a dietary supplement is dependent on the physiological and pharmacological properties of each individual supplement.