[Clinical significance of extra vitamin supplements and enriched food products]

Consumers increasingly use vitamin supplements. Also, since June 1996, foodstuffs enriched with vitamins are available on the Dutch market. These sources of extra vitamins may be useful for groups at risk for marginal vitamin deficiencies. These risk groups include the chronically ill (e.g. diabetics), people using medicaments, older people and pregnant women. Extra vitamins from low-dose supplements or enriched foodstuffs may also constitute a valuable and safe supplement to the diet of children, smokers, people eating unbalanced, people on slimming diets, vegetarians and people engaged in intensive sports. According to the advisory group Nutrition of the Health Council, addition of vitamins to foodstuffs causes no risks of any importance for public health, apart from vitamins A and D and of the trace elements selenium, copper and zinc. Consequently, these should only be added to reconstituted foodstuffs or in a substitution product, not in enriched foodstuffs.