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ARS Dietary Supplement Data Supports Nutrient Intake Assessments
By Rosalie Marion BlissApril 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.
