Health Support Criteria

Awkwardly, after the last two decades, the belief that high-dose supplementation with common dietary antioxidants will optimize health and extend life has been repeatedly challenged in extensive human clinical trials. The first doubts about the efficacy of the use of dietary antioxidant supplements arose from the 1994 ATBC trial of 29,133 male smokers in Finland. In recent years, the weight of evidence has increasingly revealed that high-dose supplementation with common dietary antioxidants (vitamins A, C, E, and beta carotene) has either no effect on health or may cause a small but measurable increase in mortality in elderly and vulnerable populations.

In short, two things have become apparent: firstly, antioxidants do not appear to work the way we thought they did; secondly, it seems that, for years, science has been focussing on the wrong antioxidants. These startling revelations were discussed in the previous chapters.

In acknowledging the evidence, NutriSearch has made two material changes to its antioxidant profile. These cautionary changes include:

• an across-the-board 25% reduction in the recommended levels of the antioxidants vitamin C, vitamin E (including alpha tocopherol and gamma [or mixed] tocopherols), vitamin A, beta carotene, and mixed carotenoids;
• the development of a new criterion that penalizes products containing excessive levels (above 100% of the adjusted Blended Standard amount) of the antioxidants vitamins A, C, E, beta-carotene and mixed carotenoids.

This criterion examines the levels of common dietary antioxidants in the product and penalizes the product rating if it contains too much of any identified nutrient.