Mineral Supplements

As part of their 70 year history, the National Foods Association has been responsible for a number of things associated with Mineral and Vitamin supplements.

In 1938 Congress passed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which for the first time acknowledged vitamin, mineral and other dietary properties of foods. The bill provides FDA with the ability to use drug provisions of the law to attempt to reclassify dietary supplements as drugs based on label claims. NHFA members band together and successfully counter FDA’s efforts to remove dietary supplements from the market. Then in 1976, after years of debate, Congress passed the Proxmire bill prohibiting the FDA from regulating vitamins and minerals as prescription drugs. NNFA mobilized strong industry and consumer support to ensure the bill was passed.

Congrats on a highly successful first seventy years!

The Senate recently passed the Central American Free Trade Agreement and now this bill is on its way to the House of Representatives. Under CAFTA, all signatory nations would be required to accept the European Union’s Codex requirements requiring you to have a prescription to buy basic vitamans and mineral supplements.

If this bill is passed, these products will become much more complicated to obtain not to mention more expensive.

With the New Year just around the corner, now is the time to be thinking about how you can make 2006 your healthiest year ever. While making sure your diet is full of fruit and vegetables it is ideal to supplement it by taking multi-vitamins and minerals.

During the next week I will attempt to provide some key things to help you prepare for 2006.

British herbal medicine retailers suffered a fresh blow yesterday when a European court upheld new rules restricting what they can sale.

The controversial new EU ruling on vitamin and mineral supplements was upheld yesterday by the European Court of Justice.

The Food Supplements Directive comes into force on 1 August.

Alternative medicine practitioners believe that the law, banning around 200 supplements from sale, will restrict consumer choice and threaten the existence of small suppliers. But the judges felt that supplements must be controlled in a similar way to conventional medicines, despite their Advocate General Leendert Geelhoed stating in April that the directive infringed legal guidelines.

The ruling states that certain restrictions are justified for the protection of public health, and believe the new measures are necessary. From August, only vitamins and minerals from an approved list will be on sale.

Euro-court backs vitamin restrictions

Joint commission of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), has moved to enforce higher global food standards.

CAC adopted more than 20 new and amended food standards during its annual meeting which ended at the weekend

Among the measures adopted were guidelines on vitamin and mineral food supplements and a code of practice to minimise and contain anti-microbial resistance.

A report from the commission made available to THISDAY explained that some 120 countries were represented at this year’s Codex session, as well as the European Community, a member organisation. Codex is an international food standards-setting body established by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). It has 172 members, all of which belong to FAO or WHO or both.

According to the report, CAC adopted global guidelines for vitamin and mineral food supplements as one of its first decisions. The guidelines recommend labelling that contains information on maximum consumption levels of vitamin and mineral food supplements, assisting countries to increase consumer information, which will help consumers use them in a safe and effective way.

FAO, WHO Go Tough On Food, Drugs Standards

There are no rules about the best time of day to take supplements. Take them when they agree with you most. Many people find taking pills of any kind as part of a morning routine is easier to remember, so taking them with breakfast is a popular option. Vitamin and mineral supplements can cause nausea, heartburn and other gastric disturbances, especially when taken on an empty stomach. For best absorption and the least irritation to the stomach, take your supplements with a meal containing fat. This is particularly important for fat-soluble vitamins (A, D and E).

Breakfast good time for taking vitamins

Consumers, retailers and small manufacturers will be damaged by the Government’s approval of a “draconian” EU directive which could see thousands of common food supplements and vitamins banned.

Ministers were motivated by “a determination to follow the harmonisation agenda across Europe at all costs”, Tory spokesman on nutrition Chris Grayling said.

Opening an Opposition half-day debate on the directive, Mr Grayling said the Government “wants us to drink alcohol at all hours but does not want us to take vitamin tablets”.

He added: “I can’t see why the Government is so blatantly ignoring the wishes of the people of this country.”

‘Eu Health Food Laws Will Wreck Businesses’

Quixtar Inc. (http://www.Quixtar.com ) has donated $228,000 worth of Nutrilite® Kids Chewable Multivitamin/Multimineral tablets to The Healthy Foundation’s Vitamin Relief USA program. These supplements — some 720,000 tablets in 8,000 bottles — will aid the foundation’s ongoing campaign to provide vitamins to school-aged children at risk for malnutrition and nutrient deficiency.

“As the leading online health and beauty retailer, we at Quixtar understand the role good nutrition plays in leading a productive, healthy and happy life,” said Ken McDonald, Managing Director of Quixtar. “We’re very proud of our Nutrilite brand of products and we’re thrilled to know our donation will help improve the health and wellbeing of these kids.”

Through Vitamin Relief USA Children First(TM), Quixtar’s donation of Nutrilite® supplements are shipped to Head Start centers in Washington D.C. where they are provided daily to 1000 children at no cost for one year. Teachers, parents and other organizational staff report that participating children have achieved higher grades, get along better with others, feel better about themselves, require fewer visits to the doctor, and have higher school attendance.

“We are so deeply grateful for Quixtar’s generosity,” says Michael Morton, Executive Director of The Healthy Foundation/Vitamin Relief USA. “These vitamins will make a great difference in the quality of life of the Head Start Children.”

Quixtar’s vitamin contribution is part of the global One By One program of its parent company, Alticor, which is helping to improve the quality of life for children around the world. Quixtar also is a national sponsor of Easter Seals (http://www.EasterSeals.com ) in the U.S. and Canada. Quixtar and IBOs contributed more than $830,000 to Easter Seals in the U.S. and Canada in 2004.

About The Healthy Foundation

The Healthy Foundation, a tax exempt, nonprofit foundation, is committed to improving the health status of children, seniors, and adults through vitamin supplementation. The Healthy Foundation provides daily vitamins to nearly 17,000 at risk children at over 500 sites in 40 states. Its national initiative, Vitamin Relief USA - Children First(TM), is a public/private partnership that distributes daily children’s chewable multivitamin/mineral supplements to children at risk for malnutrition and nutrient deficiency. To support The Healthy Foundation or for further information, please call 877/935-5348 or log onto http://www.vitaminrelief.org .

About Quixtar

Quixtar is a business opportunity company offering entrepreneurs the ability to have a business of their own through Quixtar’s I-commerce business model. I-commerce empowers Individuals to market products and manage their own business via the Internet, while being compensated by the low-cost, low- risk Independent Business Ownership Plan, and supported by the full-service Infrastructure of Quixtar.

Since 1999, Independent Business Owners powered by Quixtar have generated more than $4.2 billion in sales at http://www.quixtar.com plus nearly $320 million for Partner Stores, earning in excess of $1.37 billion in bonuses and other incentives. Their efforts have propelled Quixtar to be named the number one online retailer in the Drug/Health & Beauty category based on sales, and 12th among all e-commerce sites, according to Internet Retailer’s “Top 300 Guide.”

A subsidiary of Alticor, Quixtar is based near Grand Rapids, Mich. Quixtar Canada Corp. is headquartered in London, Ont., Canada.

At one time she was almost part of the furniture at 10 Downing Street, regularly slipping almost unnoticed through the most famous front door in the country.

But on Tuesday morning, Carole Caplin was left shivering on the Blairs’ doorstep, like any other parliamentary lobbyist.

Caplin returns to Number 10

A legal battle over new European health food laws reaches the European Court of Justice today as the British health food industry fights measures which it says will ban thousands of common food supplements and bankrupt many suppliers. Meanwhile, MPs at Westminster are staging a three-hour debate on regulating health foods.

An estimated 5,000 vitamin and mineral supplements will become illegal from August 1 this year, and will disappear from our shops. Any shopkeeper who continues to sell them will be committing a criminal offence.

Minerals such as boron and selenium, and numerous forms of vitamins A, C and E - many of which have been on sale for decades without problem, will be banned.

The EU is trying to bully supplement manufacturers into providing a dossier about the safety issues (among other things) concerning the single ingredients found in supplements, but according to the director of the National Association of Health Stores, Ralph Pike, it costs about £300,000 to compile an acceptable scientific dossier on any single ingredient.

Many popular multivitamin supplements contain up to 17 separate ingredients, so you can see how uneconomic it would be for any small to medium-sized manufacturer to compile the required dossier on such products.

Another problem is that the EC directive sets maximum levels of nutrients for supplements, and in many cases these are ridiculously low.

As a result, high-potency vitamin C, to give but one example, will also be banned. The common general multivitamin supplements, which usually contain small doses of vitamins such as vitamin C, should stay.

Are health foods good for us?