US supplements market remains healthy

Sixty-eight percent of American adults take nutritional or dietary supplements, according to the Council for Responsible Nutrition’s (CRN) 2012 annual survey.

Consumption is down 1% on last year’s figure of 69% but higher than 2010 (66%) and 2009 (65%).

Regular supplement usage also remains steady—the online survey showed that more than three-quarters of supplement users (76%) classify themselves as "regular" users, as opposed to occasional users (18 %) or seasonal users (6%). In 2011, 77% of supplement users indicated they took supplements regularly compared to 74% in 2010 and 73% in 2009.

"Year after year, our survey demonstrates that a sizeable portion of the American population values vitamins and other supplements as part of the things they do to maintain good health," said Judy Blatman, CRN’s senior vice president of communications.

"From a publicity-generating standpoint, it would be interesting to see huge swings; but from a healthy industry perspective, it's encouraging that two-thirds of adult consumers in this country continue to identify themselves as supplement customers, year after year."

Multivitamins remain the most popular supplement with 52% of the adult sample reporting usage in the past twelve months. The number of individuals aged 35-54 that reported using a multivitamin increased by 5% to 54% from 49% in 2011. Omega-3/fish oil (21%), vitamin D (20%), vitamin C (19%) and calcium (17%) were the other top supplements.

"While the multivitamin remains incredibly popular with a majority of Americans, consumer usage is not limited to the multi, or even just to vitamins,” added Blatman.

"33% report taking specialty supplements, 16 percent take sports nutrition supplements, and 18 %take herbals/botanicals."

85% of American adults indicated that they are confident in the safety, quality and effectiveness of dietary supplements – a figure consistent previous recent years.