Nutritional supplement products: Does the label information influence purchasing decisions for the physically active?
It looks like yet another flawed study trying to make nutritional supplements look bad. The adverse effects reported in a one year term for the entire U.S. was 275, and most of those were caffeine related.
Pharmaceuticals and prescription drug deaths accounted for 37,485 fatalities in 2009 – more than all traffic accidents.
No one is talking about clamping down on those labels or the marketing that’s behind them. Pharmaceutical companies currently spend one-third of all sales revenue ($100 billion a year) on marketing their products – roughly twice what they spend on research and development.
Some of that marketing buys ads in scientific journals and editorial influence. That makes it convenient to keep nutritional studies out of many journals, giving the impression there’s no science behind the claims.
Yet somehow we’re supposed to be worried about nutrition labels? Really?
Background
The increase in sales of nutritional supplement globally can be attributed, in part, to aggressive marketing by manufacturers, rather than because the nutritional supplements have become more effective. Furthermore, the accuracy of the labeling often goes unchallenged. Therefore, any effects of the supplement, may be due to contaminants or adulterants in these products not reflected on the label.
Methods
A self-administered questionnaire was used to determine how consumers of nutritional supplements acquired information to assist their decision-making processes, when purchasing a product. The study was approved by the University of Cape Town, Faculty of Health Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee. The questionnaire consisted of seven, closed and open-ended questions. The participants were asked to respond to the questions according to a defined list of statements. A total of 259 participants completed and returned questionnaires. The data and processing of the returned questionnaires was captured using Windows-based Microsoft? Office Excel 2003 SP 1 (Excel ? 1985?2003 Microsoft Corporation). Statistica Version 10 (copyright ? Stat Soft, Inc. 1984?2011) was used to calculate the descriptive statistics.
Results
The main finding of the study was that nearly 70% of the respondents who purchased supplements were strongly influenced by container label information that stipulated that the nutritional supplement product is free of banned substances. The second finding was that just over 50% of the respondents attached importance to the quality of the nutritional supplement product information on the container label. The third finding was that about 40% of the respondents were strongly influenced by the ingredients on the labels when they purchased nutritional supplements.
Conclusion
This study, (i) identifies short-comings in current labelling information practices, (ii) provides opportunities to improve label and non-label information and communication, and, (iii) presents the case for quality assurance laboratory ?screening testing? of declared and undeclared contaminants and/or adulterants, that could have negative consequences to the consumer.
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