What are dietary supplements?
Dietary supplements are understood to be modern foods which contain one or several nutrients (vitamins, minerals, trace elements) in concentrated form and which are usually available as capsules, pills or in a powder form. Their nutritional value should not exceed the triple recommended daily allowance according to DGE; otherwise they are classified as pharmaceutical products. Dietary supplements do not contain doping substances and are also not drugs.
Who needs dietary supplements?
Basically dietary supplements are unnecessary for healthy people who have normal diets. A diversified mixed diet usually contains more than enough vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids, fats and so on. Often due to occupational and private stress many people cannot manage to live on a conscious, balanced diet. Should you belong to this group of people, you, as well as the following stated groups of individuals, require a supplementation with vital substances.
- Pregnant women and nursing mothers
- Children and adolescents
- Athletes and physically active people
- Senior citizens
- Diets/vegetarian diet
It must also be taken into consideration that with predominantly sedentary occupations nowadays the risk of malnutrition with decreasing energy consumption is constantly increasing. The reason is that mainly "fast food" is consumed with a low amount of essential nutrients however they only contain "empty" calories from sugar and fat. In these cases especially, dietary supplements can, for a short period of time, replace missing high-grade foods in order to obtain the required minimum quantity of vitamins and minerals.
Conclusion:
Dietary supplements cannot replace a healthy and balanced diet! As a result persons who take vitamin pills for example, cannot do without vitamin-containing foods in which the vitamins are not contained individually but in combination with other important nutrients. Therefore dietary supplement means: supplementary to a normal diet and always as a complex multivitamin product.
