Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
FDA preparing to regulate natural supplements like chemical food additives
Tell your Representative and Senators the FDA should not view your supplements the same way they view synthetic food preservatives!According to the FDA's New Dietary Ingredient guidelines issued on July 1, 2011, the FDA believes that “new dietary supplements” must be regulated similarly to synthetic food preservatives. The FDA guidelines have modeled the outrageous safety thresholds after those in place for food additives. This appears to be in direct violation of DSHEA, the law enacted in 1994 to protect consumer access to dietary supplements, which classifies dietary supplements as foods, not food additives.
The FDA proposes that new dietary supplement ingredients should adhere to aggressive safety margins, which are typically reserved for chemical compounds known to be dangerous in all but the most miniscule concentrations.
Since food additives or preservatives such as aspartame, monosodium glutamate, and sodium nitrate are known to cause cancer or other severe health problems, the FDA has implemented safety guidelines which limit allowable concentrations of these food additives to levels that are supposed to be physiologically inert.
The fact that the FDA is trying to impose the same limits upon dietary supplements seems to be arbitrary and completely unfounded. In fact, when someone takes a dietary supplement, their intent is to positively affect the structure or function of their bodies in some way — limiting dosages of dietary supplements to physiologically inert levels defeats the entire purpose of supplementation with health-sustaining nutrients.
The FDA’s new guidelines are so flawed that even nutrients shown to be completely safe in hundreds of human clinical studies would fail to accommodate the unreasonable safety margins.
<more>
The FDA proposes that new dietary supplement ingredients should adhere to aggressive safety margins, which are typically reserved for chemical compounds known to be dangerous in all but the most miniscule concentrations.
Since food additives or preservatives such as aspartame, monosodium glutamate, and sodium nitrate are known to cause cancer or other severe health problems, the FDA has implemented safety guidelines which limit allowable concentrations of these food additives to levels that are supposed to be physiologically inert.
The fact that the FDA is trying to impose the same limits upon dietary supplements seems to be arbitrary and completely unfounded. In fact, when someone takes a dietary supplement, their intent is to positively affect the structure or function of their bodies in some way — limiting dosages of dietary supplements to physiologically inert levels defeats the entire purpose of supplementation with health-sustaining nutrients.
The FDA’s new guidelines are so flawed that even nutrients shown to be completely safe in hundreds of human clinical studies would fail to accommodate the unreasonable safety margins.
<more>
Apparently, the pharmaceutical industry is concerned that people taking supplements (which are increasingly backed up with legitimate research showing health benefits when taken sensibly) will in the long term mean less revenues from selling medicines for sick people!
12 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
