History of Supplements

Supplement usage can be traced back to the mid-20th century when a team of clinicians under National surveys muscled up and began to research to produce single vitamin supplements that will address nutrients our body needs. Later, between the 1970s-1990s, the modernization of agriculture saw the rise in selling pre packed food. The upsurge in the sale of prepackaged food led to a paradigm shift in people’s daily diet- high cases of unnourished food were recorded. 

With insufficient nutrients in food, the window for mass production of the dietary supplement was open. What followed was the enactment of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act into law in 1994. DSHEA defined dietary supplements as “a product (other than tobacco) intended to supplement the diet that bears or contains one or more of the following dietary ingredients: a vitamin; a mineral; a herb or other botanical; an amino acid; a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake; or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any ingredient described.” Which ideally put a distinction between substances that were confused with being health supplements and actual health supplements.

At its enactment, DSHEA had two major goals; to ensure unlimited consumer access to as many varieties of dietary supplements as possible and, lastly, to educate the public on intended use of supplements.