Use of food supplements and determinants of usage in a sample Italian adult population

Abstract

Objective: The aims were to collect data on consumption of different food supplements in a sample of the adult Italian population and to characterize users by demographic, physical and health-related characteristics, lifestyle and behaviour. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: The study was conducted in 2008 in ten towns of Italy (two towns from each of the five macro-areas: Northwest, Northeast, Centre, South and Islands). Subjects: Adults (n 10 000) aged $18 years were randomly selected and asked to fill in a self-administered questionnaire regarding their use of food supplements and the above variables. The effect of these variables on food supplement use was evaluated by univariate and multivariate logistic regression. Results: Of the 1723 individuals who returned the questionnaire, 49 % were users of food supplements. A large proportion (54 %) of users used more than one category of food supplement: vitamin and/or mineral supplements were the most used (61 %), followed by supplements with botanicals and botanical extracts (28 %). The results obtained by logistic regression showed that gender, town size, education level, sports practice, regular use of wholemeal cereal-based foods and presence of a low stress level were determinants for the use of food supplements in the examined population. However, these determinants were not shared by all categories of supplements. Conclusions:The results of this preliminary study highlight that associations between demographic, dietary and lifestyle factors and use of different categories of food supplements differ according to products, and cannot be accounted for simply by dichotomizing individuals as users or non-users.

Prevalence and Characteristic of Dietary Supplement Users in Malaysia: Data From the Malaysian Adult Nutrition Survey (MANS) 2014

“…A study in the USA found that older people had been associated with greater likelihood of consuming multivitamin-multimineral supplements (Rock, 2007). However, a study conducted in Italy found negative association between age and consumption of food supplements (Giammarioli et al, 2013). One might hypothesize that the existence of chronic diseases or health condition would make older people to be more motivated to use dietary supplement as a complement to disease treatments (Denison et al, 2012).…”

Characterisation of vitamin and mineral supplement users differentiated according to their motives for using supplements: results of the German National Nutrition Monitoring (NEMONIT)

“…Regarding the relationship between health status and supplement use, contradictory results have been reported (13,14,38,39) . These discrepancies may be due to differences in the study populations, the definitions of supplements and the assessment methods.…”

Intake of Minerals from Food Supplements in a German Population—A Nationwide Survey

“…This is in contrast to previous surveys, in which elderly women were more likely to use multiple supplements [28]- [31]. One reason for this discrepancy could be the inclusion of drugs containing calcium and vitamin D, which are more often consumed by women due to osteoporosis prophylaxis, in former studies [2] [8] [29]. Overall, multiple use played a minor role when considering the totality of subjects.…”