Compare Your Vitamin and Health Supplements

Get informed about what you are eating and putting into your body. The supplements isle in the chemist is now often physically larger than the prescription part of the chemist. Once we are fully grown, most adults benefit from calorific restriction or simply putting less in your mouth which has been proven to increase longevity. Habits developed over a lifetime make changing diet much harder than everyone expects and supplements may help.

Comparing supplements helps you understand the ingredients of each tablet and how they may affect your health.

In Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) regulates all medicines including prescription, over-the-counter and complementary medicines. The TGA ensures that Australians have access to “quality therapeutic goods that are safe to use and fulfil their intended purpose”. The TGA refers to health supplements as traditional or alternative medicines. Rather than a benefit maximisation role which is of course extremely difficult given the vast differences in what is ‘good’ for each individual the TGA’s actual role seems to be more about insuring that ingredients don’t cause harm (again can this be applied to all individuals?).

In New Zealand, Medsafe is the regulatory body for health supplements. In the USA the regulatory body is the FDA.

Pharmaceutical drugs are regulated and tested before being used by the public. Registered medicines must display the R number on the packaging. https://www.tga.gov.au/registered-medicines.

In Australia, some complementary medicines are evaluated and registered. All registered alternative medicines have a code eg Elevit is 213113.

If the ingredients of the complementary medicine are deemed low risk and are in acceptable amounts the supplement is not tested but is listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG)

An example of the comparisons you will find across the Cosups site is shown in the table below. This comparison is between two pregnancy vitamin supplements Elevit and Natalis.