Poll taps views on dietary supplements> UM researcher finds many people take vitamins, minerals to compensate for poor eating

The women in the University of Maine classroom nodded knowingly as Mary Ellen Camire pointed to the chart showing that less than 30 percent of women get enough calcium, the mineral that helps prevent the bone loss of osteoporosis. Among teen-age girls, often known for their aversion to milk, it’s less than 15 percent.

“Are all calciums equal?” asked one woman.

As bottles and boxes of calcium multiply on store shelves, it was a good question to ask at Wednesday’s installment of the Women in the Curriculum-Women’s Studies Program Lunch Series at UM in Orono, where the focus was dietary supplements. Camire, associate professor of food science and human nutrition, was ready with the answer.

Actually, Camire said, research shows that the calcium carbonate found in certain over-the-counter antacids “is pretty well utilized” by the body,

Another woman held up an expensive packet of imported coral calcium, explaining she’d been taking that supplement daily.

“If I can take Tums,” she asked, “what am I spending $40 a month for?”

Must be marketing, suggested a third attendee. “I’m from a Caribbean island, and we have coral calcium,” she said, “and we don’t use it.”

Why women need and want dietary supplements is of great interest to Camire, who did an Internet survey with the help of a grant from WIC. Posted on the Web from August 1997 through January 1998, it was a small survey, eliciting 61 completed questionnaires from as far away as Europe and Hong Kong.

Among the questions posed were why people take supplements, how often they take them, which products they take, and how they rate their health.

The respondents comprised 20 women and eight men who used dietary supplements, and 24 women and eight men who didn’t. The average age for all four categories was in the 30s.

Some of the questions identified participants’ perception of who had the power over their health. Was it the person? Was it someone else such as a doctor or parent? Or was health merely a matter of chance?

The results did not vary greatly, but showed that supplement users were more likely to think control over their health lay with them. Those who didn’t take supplements were more likely to think that chance was the factor.

The top reasons the respondents took the supplements were to compensate for diets they thought were inadequate, or to treat ailments.

Camire acknowledged that the 61 surveys were a “small sample size,” and said she hoped to get grants to do a larger version of the study. And, she added, “what we need to be doing is to get the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] to take a look at” supplements.

Supplements are big business, having tripled in sales from $4 billion in 1994 — the year that vitamins, minerals and amino acids were recategorized from nutrients to dietary supplements — to $12 billion in 1998.

More research needs to be done in the areas of botanical herbs, for example, and recommendations need to be made, Camire said. The NIH actually has an office on dietary supplements, she said, but there’s no budget line for it.

Camire is chairman-elect of the nutrition division of the Institute of Food Technologists, a group she said would be coming out with some recommendations.

Meanwhile, the questions grow as fast the numbers of people who take supplements.

Is ginseng beneficial? “We don’t know,” Camire said.

Another woman wondered what to tell elderly clients with joint pain when they ask about glucosamine.

There’s no study yet that shows proof of benefits, Camire said.

Still another woman said she takes glucosamine, and it has helped her joints. She heard about it from her husband, a veterinary who has given animals the substance for years.

In so many cases, Camire said, “we need more testing.” For the safety of the consumer, she said, “I would prefer that non-nutrients be regulated as over-the-counter drugs.”

The dangers are real, she said. “Since 1994, I’ve been fighting to put restrictions on ephedra,” a botanical that increases the heart rate. “There have been deaths” from taking it, she pointed out.

Camire’s talk was the first edition of the WIC Lunch Series in its new location, 109 Donald P. Corbett Hall. Except for the Feb. 10 talk on “Race and Masculinity: Paul Robeson and the Modernist Aesthetic,” scheduled for 12:30 p.m. at 110 Little Hall, the rest of the weekly offerings will be held at Corbett.

For information on Women in the Curriculum and the Women’s Studies Program, call 581-1228, or check the Web site, www.umaine.edu/wic