Congressional Findings on Dietary Supplements

When Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act in 1994, lawmakers emphasized the importance of communicating the positive health benefits of supplements to the American public. Congress highlighted:

• The importance of nutrition and the benefits of dietary supplements in health promotion and disease prevention, as documented increasingly in scientific studies.
  
  
• The link between ingestion of certain nutrients or dietary supplements and the prevention of chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis.
  
  
• Education, good nutrition, and the appropriate use of safe nutritional supplements as preventive health measures that limit the incidence of chronic diseases and reduce long-term health care expenditures.
  
  
• The importance of informing and empowering consumer choice by disseminating data from scientific studies that demonstrate the health benefits related to particular dietary supplements.
  
  
• The growing need to disseminate information linking nutrition and long-term good health.
  
  
• More than half of Americans regularly consume dietary supplements of vitamins, minerals or herbs as a means of improving their health, according to national surveys. (Today, surveys indicate that seven out of 10 Americans use dietary supplements.)
  
  
• DSHEA protects consumers' right of access to safe dietary supplements as necessary in order to promote wellness.
  
  
• Dietary supplements are safe within a broad range of intake protocols, and safety problems with supplements are relatively rare.
  
  
• The federal government's powers to take swift action against products that are unsafe or adulterated balanced by the understanding it should not impose unreasonable regulatory barriers limiting or slowing the flow of safe products and accurate information to consumers.
  
  
• DSHEA provides a rational framework to supersede the ad hoc, patchwork regulatory policy on dietary supplements.