From the moment a child consumes their very first chewable multivitamin, they wonder where this delicious fruity treat came from. From a child’s point of view, this question comes with a simple answer – the store. More creatively, a child might picture a magical vitamin land where vitamins are picked from trees.
Unfortunately, as an adult, you stop believing in magical places such as vitamin land and you know the origins of vitamin supplements go beyond “the store.” The question is – where do vitamin supplements come from and how do you know they are safe?
History of Vitamin Supplements
According to the National Institutes of Health, vitamin supplements – in pill form – have been around since the 1940s. The very first mention of the vitamin (called vitamines at the time) dates back to Dr. Casimir Funk in 1912. One year after Dr. Funk coined active properties in rice husks as “vitamines,” it was two researchers at University of Wisconsin and Yale who actually discovered the very first vitamins. This discovery was made while studying the cod liver oil and butterfat in animal diets.
Selecting Vitamin Supplements
In order to make sure a vitamin supplement is safe – and to make sure it is the best option for your needs – there are a few things you need to consider.
For starters, find out whether the manufacturer uses adequate biological storage practices and dedicated transportation practices like a using a lab moving company for their research facilities and to store and transport their inventory. This ensures their products are properly stored until they are sold to the customer, which means the customer doesn’t have to worry about contamination issues. More importantly, you need to answer the following questions:
- · Did they have a third party of scientific authority verify, test, and approve the supplement?
- · Has the supplement been tested for harmful levels of potential known contaminants?
- · As the product produced in a facility that meets – or exceeds – industry standards?
- · Does the product label make believable claims?
Considering the extreme popularity of vitamins and minerals, consumers need reassurances that these supplements are properly regulated. A person who wants to lose weight, for example, needs to know more about how weight loss supplements work.
Recalls or Lawsuits: For obvious reasons, you should always check to see if the manufacturer has had any products recalled or has any lawsuits against them. If they have had products recalled, you should also look into why the product was recalled. There’s a difference between a recall because a product doesn’t work or hurts someone and a product being recalled because an advertisement is misleading.
An example of that being when a lawsuit emerged against the energy drink Red Bull for falsely advertising that the product “gives you wings.” The argument being the energy drink doesn’t actually give you wings, which was the complainant’s satirical way of saying the advertisement didn’t live up to the reality. Using this same example, it is also important to make sure you determine whether the lawsuit actually happened. While Red Bull did settle a lawsuit regarding the false advertisement, there was a hoax that it was a $13 million-dollar settlement for lack of growing wings, when it wasn’t.
Disposing of Expired Products
In addition to learning the history and the regulation process, you also need to know what to do with vitamin supplements when they expire. While most expired supplements won’t hurt you, they also won’t help as much as the expiration date marks when they stop being fully effective. Like medication, vitamin supplements shouldn’t just be tossed in the trash when they expire. They need to be properly disposed of.
The FDA has regulations in place for disposing of medical substances to ensure people dispose of them in the safest manner possible. For the most part, the FDA recommends rinsing your expired supplements down a sink or flushing them down the toilet. For those who don’t like the flushing or rinsing method, a DEA-authorized collector is another option. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, often have collection boxes for individuals to deposit medication to be properly disposed of. You can even work out a deal with a DEA-authorized collector to get envelopes you can use to mail in the expired products and they will dispose of them for you.
As you can see, vitamin supplements have been around for a pretty long time. Armed with some helpful information, you should have no trouble buying some that are both safe and effective.
