USDA-ARS and NIH have released a new Dietary
Supplement Ingredient Database, which provides statistical estimates--based on
chemical analysis--of the nutrient content of selected ingredients in dietary
supplements, compared with label-reported ingredient levels. Photo courtesy
of Microsoft Clipart.
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ARS Dietary Supplement Data Supports Nutrient Intake
Assessments
By Rosalie Marion
Bliss
April 20, 2009 More than 50 percent of adults in the
United States consume dietary supplements, according to experts. Now, a newly
launched resource, the Dietary Supplement Ingredient Database (DSID), will help
researchers improve estimates of the U.S. population's total nutrient intakes.
That's because the DSID was developed to improve estimates of the U.S
population's nutrient intakes based not only on the beverages and foods people
consume, but also on their dietary supplement intake.
The Agricultural Research Service
(ARS) Nutrient
Data Laboratory at the Maryland-based
Beltsville
Human Nutrition Research Center and the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary
Supplements (ODS) planned and developed the DSID with other government
collaborators.
Joanne
M. Holden is the ARS laboratory's research leader, and Paul M. Coates is
the ODS director.
The collaborators rolled out the new public-access database during the
annual meeting of the American Society for
Nutrition, held in conjunction with the Experimental Biology 2009 meeting this week
in New Orleans, La. The conference is sponsored by member societies of the
Federation of American Societies for
Experimental Biology.
The database provides statistical estimates—based on chemical
analysis—of the nutrient content of selected ingredients in dietary
supplements, compared with label-reported ingredient levels. The first release
of the DSID provides estimated levels of 18 vitamin and mineral ingredients
derived from analytical data for 115 representative unspecified adult
multivitamin/multimineral supplements (MVMs).
ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The
DSID has been developed as a complement to the
USDA-ARS
National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, the source of
food-nutrient data used for the ARS
What We Eat in
America study component of the National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey.
Total nutrient intake data is based on the foods, beverages and dietary
supplements people consume. The DSID, as a resource, will increase researchers'
ability to investigate relationships between dietary supplement intakes and
health indicators in future applied research studies.
To access DSID-1, go to:
http://dietarysupplementdatabase.usda.nih.gov
Future releases are planned to include evaluations of nutrients in other
commonly used supplements.
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