dietary supplement beverages

Dietary supplement drinks are special dietary drinks between ordinary drinks and blue hat health foods. They cannot completely replace professional dietary supplements such as tablets and capsules, and they are definitely not suitable for long-term drinking in large quantities as daily drinking water. It is positioned more as a "convenient nutritional supplement tool for scenarios". Whether it is easy to use or a pitfall, it all depends on whether you choose it and how you drink it.

When I was doing rotations in the nutrition department, I would meet three or four people a week who had problems because of drinking such drinks: There was a sophomore girl who stuffed a supplement drink with nicotinamide into her bag every day in order to whiten her skin.； There was also a young man who was working out and drank a product that was said to be fortified with whey protein as water in order to build muscle. As a result, he gained 12 pounds in two months and did not grow much muscle. Mild fatty liver came to his door first. But it’s not completely useless. Friends who run cross-country around me always carry drinks with branched-chain amino acids and electrolytes in their bags. Drinking them during long-distance training is more convenient than carrying salt pills and protein powder alone. It is also absorbed quickly and will not stick in the throat like swallowing pills. Especially in summer when you sweat a lot, it is more useful than drinking mineral water.

Many people are confused about the difference between it and ordinary beverages and health products. In fact, according to my country's "Special Dietary Food Classification Rules", compliant dietary supplement beverages are allowed to add vitamins, minerals, amino acids, prebiotics and other nutrients that meet national standards. The effective addition amount is usually 3-10 times that of ordinary beverages, but it is lower than the health food with the blue hat label, and it cannot promote disease prevention and treatment effects. There is indeed a lot of controversy over this type of product in the industry: pragmatists believe that people are now fast-paced and have no time to have breakfast or take multivitamins in the morning. Buying a bottle of this kind of drink with vitamin B, iron, and dietary fiber on the road is much healthier than drinking milk tea and carbonated drinks with a bunch of additives, and it is a "dimensionality reduction option"” ； Another group of rigorous nutrition scholars believe that most products on the market are "cutting leeks". They either add very few active ingredients and promote them to such high levels that even 10 bottles of them cannot match the content of a vitamin tablet. Or they add a large amount of white sugar and fructose syrup for the taste. The little nutrition supplemented is not enough to offset the metabolic burden caused by sugar. It is completely an IQ tax.

Oh, by the way, a friend asked me before whether drinking this kind of drink will make me gain weight. Actually, it really depends on how you choose. I have stocked up on a lot of these drinks myself, and after going through many pitfalls, I came up with a few dead-end standards: Damn, there are so many rules and regulations, just look through the ingredient list first. If the first three are white sugar and fructose syrup, just put them back without negotiation. Don't care how much nicotinamide and collagen it says is added. The sugar you drink is 10 times more than the active ingredients. The gain outweighs the gain. Then it depends on the proportion of the nutrient you need. For example, if I want to supplement vitamin C, it depends on whether the vitamin C content in the nutritional label can reach more than 30% of the recommended daily intake (that is, what we often call RNI). Otherwise, I might as well buy a 3-pound orange for 10 yuan downstairs, which is more cost-effective and delicious. And the most important point: don’t buy drinks that advertise the effects of “sleep aid”, “strengthening”, “whitening and lightening”. According to regulations, such drinks cannot promote their effects. Anyone who dares to boast of such effects is either illegally added ingredients, or pure fraud. Many drinks claiming to be a sleep aid have been found to have illegally added melatonin. Long-term drinking will disrupt your own melatonin secretion, which is not worth the gain.

I also have to remind you that special groups of people should not touch it blindly, such as pregnant women, children under three years old, and people with basic liver and kidney diseases. It is best to ask a doctor before drinking. Also, if you are taking supplements such as multivitamins and calcium tablets, don’t drink these drinks every day. I met a girl before who took a multivitamin every day and drank two bottles of supplement drinks with vitamins A and D. As a result, she overdosed on vitamin A and suffered from dizziness for almost a week before she recovered. After all, fat-soluble vitamins accumulate in the body, and taking too much can really lead to poisoning.

To be honest, people's demand for health is getting higher and higher now. This type of product is originally for everyone's convenience. There is no need to beat it to death with a stick, and don't treat it as a panacea. Understand your own needs, keep your eyes open, and drink occasionally to make up for the dietary gaps. If you really have a clear nutritional deficiency problem, you still have to find a doctor to prescribe professional supplements. Don't expect that drinking two bottles of drinks will solve the problem.