The findings come despite warnings from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about harmful substances in supplements' ingredients. The FDA recalled 274 diet supplements between 2009 and 2012 for containing banned ingredients, but about a third of them remained on shelves.
Moreover, 85 percent of those surveyed incorporated diet and exercise plans into their lifestyles, meaning that is was not possible to prove the effectiveness of the supplements. A third of the 3,000 people surveyed reported that they did not lose any weight from diet supplements.
Unlike prescription drugs which are obliged to undergo thorough clinical trials, supplements are treated more like food, and assumed to be safe. But according to recent studies, half of the users surveyed in the United States reported at least one side effect, ranging from serious digestive problems to rapid heartbeat, as reported by the magazine.
Meanwhile, another recent study by the US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health indicated that the prevalence of diet supplement usage in the United States was almost 70 percent, with over half of the respondents citing overall health as the reason for using them. The study also highlighted that those who consumed supplements were more likely than nonusers to have healthy lifestyles, placing the effectiveness of the supplements further in question.
