Dr. Dezső Csupor - What to look out for when buying a food supplement?
Dr. Dezső Csupor, head of the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Szeged, gave an interview to 24.hu news portal, in which he talks about the most common problems with food supplements.
The following details are worth reading so that you can always choose carefully and with a critical eye when looking for similar products.
Dr. Dezső Csupor was involved as an expert in the development of GALLMET food supplements.
Suppose a marketer claims that his product cures impotence. And you say that the active ingredient in this product has no connection to such a cure. If this spreads, the distributor could close the shop.
The story is not always that simple. There are two possible scenarios: one is that the product may not really be effective based on its composition. But it could also be that it is effective, but the composition is different from what it says. If a marketed product is very suspect, we test it in the laboratory. It may appear, for example, that a herbal potency enhancer is effective because it contains the active ingredient in Viagra, or that a diet pill is consumed because it contains a very potent consumable, but they forget to write this on the box. Recently, there has been a trend for cosmetics to come onto the market with claims of miraculous effects, but these are not justified by the ingredients listed. In such cases, too, the laboratory can reveal the falsity.
In recent years, fake websites have been appearing, advertising some miracle cure by misusing the name of a well-known person or scientist. These very well targeted internet advertisements are being seen by everyone on the internet. The techniques vary, but the types of products that are being used to trick consumers are more or less constant. People mostly want to look better, for example, to lose weight, to be more muscular, younger and less wrinkled, to have better sexual performance, to be able to concentrate better and, of course, to prevent disease.
We don't want to get old and die; in fact, we want to perform in all aspects as well as when we are young. And we want to do this with as little effort as possible - by taking something or putting something on ourselves.
This demand is eternal and a huge market has been built on it.
In the case of food supplements and cosmetics, marketing is not subject to official quality control, so the fact that something is legal does not mean much in the current legal environment. It is also a common question about such products that "at least it does no harm", but again I can only say that I don't know unless the authorities test it. Of course, most consumers think that if something is on the market legally, it must have been well checked by someone. Except that, for a long time now, there is no basis for that.
If I decide tomorrow that I'm going to sell small packets of glucose at a horrendous price and write on the box that it's a miracle stimulant, can I do that?
Smoothly. A food supplement can be produced by anyone who has a food manufacturing licence, although I note that this is not very difficult to obtain. But anyone can be a distributor. Food supplements can be marketed by registering them with the authorities. If you notify something today, you can market it from tomorrow, regardless of what is in the box or on the box. There is what is called producer responsibility, which means that if there is a problem, for example if it can be proven that the product is making people ill, it can be banned.
But it can be a long time between the announcement and the ban. Often, by the time the authorities can act, the fraudsters have already made a lot of money and disappeared.
If a drug is not dangerous, but simply does not deliver what it promises on the box, so what?
Nothing, because you can't expect any therapeutic effect from food supplements.
But most people take them to get better or not to get sick.
However, it is still true that the law does not allow food supplements to be used either for treatment or prevention of disease. In principle, their role would be to make up for a vitamin, trace mineral or other dietary substance that is in short supply.
GALLMET products are available in ALL Hungarian pharmacies and herbal shops or can be ordered!
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