Important Dietary Healthcare Behaviors for Users of Supplements

Research Reveals Important
Dietary Healthcare Behaviors
Of Vitamin & Supplement Users

According to new research into consumer behaviors, reported in the journal Appetite, found that although vitamin and mineral supplement users are more likely to have a healthy dietary lifestyle compared to non-supplement users, the data also revealed that a higher percentage of supplement users have an unhealthy diet than a healthy dietary pattern.

"Both hypotheses that vitamin and mineral supplement are used by people with unhealthy diets and by people who least need them seems to hold true meaning," said researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich),

The researchers said that there needs to be further investigation into
the supplement users with an unhealthy dietary pattern, "as they might consciously or unconsciously belief that using vitamin and mineral supplements might compensate high intakes of unhealthy foods and
low intakes of fruits and vegetables or an unhealthy lifestyle in general."

Interestingly, very little had been known about the driving factors for vitamin and supplement use and as to whether people use vitamin and mineral supplements to compensate for unhealthy diets, or whether people whom already have a healthy diet use nutritional supplements.

The new research is based on data from 6189 respondents to the Swiss Food Panel questionnaire for 2010; It investigated whether users can be categorized into specific clusters based on dietary lifestyle variables.

The research team reported that that for supplement use factors
including: gender, age, education, chronic illness, health consciousness, understanding the benefits of fortification, and convenience food and
sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, were all of importance.

Further analysis revealed three clusters of consumers:
1) healthy diet, 2) unhealthy diet, and 3) modest diet.

"Compared to non-users a higher percentage of vitamin and mineral supplement users was categorised in the healthy cluster and a lower percentage in the unhealthy cluster," noted the research team.

They also noted that more supplement users were categorized as having
an unhealthy diet (31.4%) than having a healthy diet (20.6%).

However, the authors noted that the findings explained only 11.4% of
the variance, "which is very likely the result of the existence of various consumer groups with different and partly unknown motivations."

"Future work is needed to examine whether these consumer groups
also exist in other countries and to reveal important psychological
factors and motivations that might vary between these groups," they
added.

Source: Appetite (Published online)

"Vitamin and mineral supplement users: do they have healthy or unhealthy dietary behaviours?"

This article is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not intended to

provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Consult with your doctor or healthcare

professional for medical and nutrition advice.