About half to two-thirds of adults in the U.S. use dietary supplements on a regular basis, contributing to an industry that generated more than $6 billion in 2013.
On this edition of River to River, Ben Kieffer talks with experts about an investigation, led by New York’s Attorney General, which found that only 21 percent of common supplements actually had DNA from the plants advertised on the labels.
Ben Kieffer talks with Dr. Suzanne Bartlett, physician and director of the Integrative Medicine Center at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids, and Morgan Sayler, clinical assistant professor at the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy and faculty with the Iowa Lutheran Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program in Des Moines..
"A lot of the demands have been that the FDA should come in and try and regulate this, but it's a billion dollar industry. The only way I imagine it is there will be three bottles of supplements on the shelf of every Walmart in the country," says Sayler. "I think [regulation] will take years."
