Why do some daily supplements give you 1000+% of the RDI for some vitamins and mineral and not as much of others?

Question

Why do some daily supplements give you 1000+% of the RDI for some vitamins and mineral and not as much of others?

In: 13

Answer 1

There is essentially no regulation on supplements in the US. Unless taking it kills you or puts you in the hospital within a short period of time then its legal to sell.

The same is basically true of supplement labelling. Labels are required to be accurate, but that requirement is only as strong as the enforcement of it – which is more or less non-existent. The FDA only actively enforces labelling issues when the supplement claims to treat a specific medical condition *and* the supplement is being sold in significant volumes through brick and mortar stores. So if a supplement is claiming to have Vitamin A in it when the reality is that its just sawdust – its unlikely that anyone will ever do anything about that.

There has been a phenomenon over the past 5 years where supplement sellers on Amazon have been involved in a sort of labelling arms race where they’ve been increasing the amount of vitamins and minerals on their labels as much as they think people will believe. This has now started to spill over into traditional retail supplements as well.

There have been issues with this. For example, there have been some people who have developed permanent nerve damage from over supplementation of Vitamin B6 as a result of taking Amazon supplements. However, generally speaking, there’s no reason to believe that many supplement labels are accurate.

Again, there’s basically no enforcement on any of this. Even if the labels are accurate, major symptoms from vitamin and mineral overdoses often only occur after taking large amounts of them over very long periods of time – enough so that its hard for the FDA to track and enforce specific brands.