Dietary Supplements: Certified
Recently I watched a webinar on mitochondrial health and athletic performance co-sponsored by the American College of Sports Medicine and a nutritional company. The speakers were a clinical researcher and a PhD dietitian for a professional basketball team. I’m going to review what the clinical researcher talked about on Saturday.
Today I’m going to focus on a comment by the dietary specialist. She believes as I do that supplements complement a good diet, but when she started talking about dietary supplements, she said they aren’t regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. At that point, I would typically stop listening because she’s incorrect; both the FDA and the FTC regulate dietary supplements; it’s just done in a different way than over-the-counter medications and pharmaceuticals.
Then she said that whatever supplements she recommends to her players, she looks for products that are certified by NSF or the United States Pharmacopeia (USP). I agree. These are not easy certifications to obtain. It isn’t just that the supplement is tested once and it’s over—it’s an ongoing process that costs a lot of money for the company, but they’re industry standards. Certification is something you should consider when you purchase dietary supplements of any type but especially related to sport performance.
What are you prepared to do today?
