Definition: A dietary supplement, under US law (21 U.S.C. 321(ff)), is a product intended for ingestion to supplement the diet that contains one or more dietary ingredients, such as a vitamin, mineral, herb or amino acid. It must be labeled as a dietary supplement and is legally treated as a food, not a drug.
The statute lists six kinds:
The product must be intended for ingestion, must not be presented as a conventional food or as the only item of a meal, and must be labeled as a dietary supplement.
The same section says a dietary supplement does not include an article approved as a new drug or licensed as a biologic, or one in substantial, public clinical trials as a drug, unless it was marketed as a supplement or food first. This is one reason injectable peptides sold online are not dietary supplements: they are not taken by mouth, and some are approved drug ingredients. Many are labeled research use only instead.
Supplements do not carry an FDA-approved label like a prescribing information document, so there are no trial side-effect tables to check against. Logging the brand, the amount on the label and the start date gives you and your prescriber a record if something changes. Dose Track lets you add supplements next to prescribed medicines so the timeline stays in one place.
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