Talk:Nutritional supplement

I think that the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database (http://naturaldatabase.therapeuticresearch.com/) was removed in error. 1) It is run by pharmacists and scientists (http://naturaldatabase.therapeuticresearch.com/Content.aspx?cs=&s=ND&page=ourteam) and 2) they cite peer-reviewed science, not quackery (e.g., see http://naturaldatabase.therapeuticresearch.com/ce/ceCourse.aspx?s=ND&cs=&pc=11-104&cec=1&pm=5). Overall, it's an excellent resource on the topic; I have used it professionally. Furthermore, it covers a herbal supplements and nutraceuticals. (talk Bongolian) 07:05, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I further add that the National Library of Medicine uses the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database as an authoritative resource: [1]. (talk Bongolian) 01:37, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

This page will need to be merged

...but into Vitamin supplement or Herbal supplement? Reverend Black Percy (talk) 11:42, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

It serves as almost a disambiguation (with a bit of info in regulation etc) for various food woo at the moment, turn it into a proper one. (Or possibly merge it all into an an article called "Dietary supplements" or some variation of that). Christopher (talk) 11:57, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

There appears to be a reasonable separation between herbal supplement and nutritional supplements. But vitamin supplements are, in fact, a form of nutritional supplement. As such, here's my suggestion: we merge "vitamin supplement" into "nutritional supplement", and try to get the resulting, unified nutritional supplement article to Gold quality long-term?

All other general mention of categories of supplements should redirect either to nutritional supplement, to herbal supplement, or to the fork page (dietary supplement).

This would leave us with two (future) Gold articles — herbal supplement and nutritional supplement — and one catch-all fork page (dietary supplement).

Now, I'm sure there are many ways we could go about this (the above is just a suggestion). But my point is, supplements are such an important thing to cover that we ought to reduce the amount of general articles into two or fewer (ultimately of Gold quality), keeping all our articles on specific products (e.g. Airborne) intact. Sound allright? Reverend Black Percy (talk) 12:14, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I still think herbal supplements are sort of the same thing but I think that suggestion is the best way to go. Christopher (talk) 12:27, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd say there's overlap in terms of things like chlorella, which is a sea weed, though it's eaten by vegetarians due to their lack of Vitamin B12 (though I can't recall if chlorella is even really a good source of B12 or not atm).

As something of a supplement geek myself, think there's atleast two major differences inherent to herbal supplements (when compared to nutritional supplements).

Aside from the obvious fact that herbals rarely contain any significant amount of calories (nor even list their calorie content)...

Herbal supplements are:

1. Generally not made from food crops. I.e., herbal plants are generally not "edible" in the sense that you could't sustain yourself on them in the wild. If you were marooned on a desert island with nothing but St. John's Wort (flowers) to eat, you wouldn't last very long. Many herbals are even notoriously hard to digest, and often rely on co-administration with a meal for basic bioavailability/in order to limit digestible discomfort. Many are viable only when pre-processed (e.g. maca) or taken with an absorption enhancer (e.g. circumin with piperine). The story often goes about thena same with many other herbals, all derived from roots, stems, flowers, seeds and leaves of various plants which typically are not ordinary food crops.
2. Generally consumed for their phytochemical content, i.e. because you want to ingest certain unique molecules (e.g. morphine, nicotine, caffeine) or a certain class of such molecules (e.g. rosavins, anthocyanins, etc). Some herbals do provide meaningful amounts of micronutrients, but — aside from certain fats in select cases (e.g. particular nuts) — herbals are never really eaten primarily for macronutrient content, either (but for their novel molecules). And macronutrients especially are MUCH more available through food or macronutrient supplements (e.g. whey protein) which don't rely on tiny, dried extracts of hard-to-digest herbals (e.g. ginko biloba) for macronutrient delivery.

As such, there is a — to me — fairly clear difference between herbals and nutritional supplements, generally. But there is no difference between a multivitamin supplement and a nutritional supplement (read: the former is a kind of the latter). Reverend Black Percy (talk) 12:52, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, they are different (but certainly easy to confuse). Christopher (talk) 13:00, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

At a glance, certainly! And many woo products tend to combine herbals with micronutrients and vice versa... Just a complete mess if you ask me. Supplement rule #1: except for select things like circumin, never buy a supplent product with more than one ingredient. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 13:06, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ There are also supplements that contain both vitamins/minerals and herbs. Here's an orthomolecular example.[2] Here's a real weird one, containing "turkey tail" (a formerly discarded cut of turkey that is now highly prized in some Pacific Islands for its fat content), herbal extracts, "fermented silver", "fermented gold", "fermented platinum", and both soil bacteria and soil bacteriophages (viruses that attack bacteria).[3] Bongolian (talk) 19:59, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Correction: Turkey tail is likely referring to a mushroom (Trametes versicolor),[4] rather that turkey butt. Bongolian (talk) 07:15, 6 April 2017 (UTC)