An apple a day isn’t the only thing keeping doctors away.
Students who want to maintain proper amounts of vitamins, nutrients and minerals are adding dietary supplements to their daily health regimens.
One dining venue on campus has caught on to this growing trend and provides dietary supplements for students, which can be added to smoothies and drinks.
“Protein and multivitamin supplements are by far our most popular at our Juice 2 location,” said Gregory Leach, a graduate student in business and operations manager of the Courtside Cafe and Juice 2 franchise at the Recreation and Physical Activity Center.
Other supplement blends available at the restaurant are fiber, antioxidants, calcium, energy, and flu fighter.
Health food chain stores such as GNC are also reaping the benefits from today’s health conscious youth.
“People want the nutritional value that food provides, but without the unhealthy additives that come along with eating chemically processed foods,” said Ryan Sells, an employee of the South Third Street GNC.
Sells said that using supplements like protein powders are the easiest and most efficient way to gain lean muscle and increase energy.
But health specialists, such as Jackie Buell, disagree.
“There are very few cases where your body will absorb more nutrients from a supplement than from food,” said Buell, a certified dietician and program director of Ohio State sports nutrition.
Buell says a proper diet that incorporates foods from all of the basic food groups should be used instead of multiple supplements.
“People should use food first then use multivitamins to compensate for whatever else is missing.”
She also said the lack of federal regulation presents a problem. Supplements are regulated as food, not as drugs, so they are not required to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration before they are made available to the public.
This concerns many health care professionals who say dietary supplements should be proven to safe before they are permitted to be sold.
The Juice 2 Web site offers a disclaimer about supplements advising students who suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, or who are pregnant to consult with a doctor before using these products.
Star Allen, a senior in African American Studies and junior forward for the Ohio State’s women’s basketball team, says her coaches do not support supplement use because they are not subject to FDA approval.
“A lot of the supplements are banned and we cannot use them,” she said.
Instead, her coaches advise athletes to perform cardiovascular exercises regularly and maintain a balanced diet to stay healthy. “They do not support us using supplements, they stress that we just eat the foods to get the nutritional value.”
Tiara Norman can be reached at [email protected].
