Which supplements do you actually need to take?

The supplement industry is booming, but do we really know which vitamins should form part of our daily routine?

In this episode of our special healthy living series, we discuss whether or not you actually need to take some of the most popular vitamins and supplements. Plus, we share our best advice on how you should supplement your intake if you life a vegan lifestyle.

Read more about the supplements you do and don’t need (https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/nutrition-and-supplements/article/vitamin-and-herbal-supplements-explained/vitamin-supplements-you-do-and-dont-need-aKpo97c6Axj0) & sign up for our Food & Health newsletter, it’s free monthly (https://signup.which.co.uk/wlp-foodandhealthnewsletter?internalReferral=incopypromotion)

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Welcome to this podcast from which I’m Rob Lily Jones and joining us on today’s episode giving you expert advice and recommendations to help you live your best life every day. We have Shafali Loth, the public health nutritionist here at Witch. Hi Shafali. Hi. Great to have you back on the series of course. And also we are joined today by Sophie Medlin, a dietitian and founder of City Dieticians here in London. Hi, thanks for having me. It’s brilliant to have you here. Thank you both for being here. Shafali, kick off with you if that’s okay. On the surface of it then, taking supplements seems like the right thing to do. I would say not necessarily. Interesting. Um, you know, as you said, the supplement industry is booming and our research shows that a lot of people are taking supplements regularly, but actually if you’re following a balanced healthy diet, most of the time you probably don’t need to be adding something into your diet. I guess the exception to that is vitamin D, which I think we’ll move on and talk about. Yeah, we we’ll talk about vitamin D later on. As you say, this is really interesting. I mean, I don’t know if this is an unusual question to ask, but let’s find out. I mean, Sophie, can you take too many supplements? Yeah, absolutely. My patients come to my clinics either with a huge list of supplements that they’re taking and we end up stopping at least half of them or they’re not taking anything at all when they really should be because they’ve cut things out their diet or whatever it might be. So, it’s sort of trying to manage people into the middle of that. And absolutely you can take too much of various different things particularly fats soluble vitamins which your body can’t process and excrete as easily as other vitamins. So we do have to be really careful. Even vitamin D we can take too much of and people are taking it in supplement form and it’s in functional foods and it’s in protein powders and it’s in everything else. So we do have to be careful particularly if you have any sort of medical condition you’re taking certain medications things like that. There is a lot of caution. Vitamin supplements are by no means benign. We do need to be careful with them. This is obviously an industry that, you know, you’ve been working in for a long time now. Is it safe to say that there’s more interest now in in vitamins and supplements than there’s ever been before? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s growing exponentially. I think what we’re seeing, which is really nice at the moment, is a a real drive towards better quality supplements, people recognizing that actually the supplements that are out there are probably not as good quality as they could be, and people driving towards evidence-based management of different conditions through vitamins and supplements. also more targeted benefits, right? So, saying for example, you’ve got irritable bowel syndrome, here would be a great supplement bundle for you. That sort of thing can work really well for individuals because that choice out there is massive and really overwhelming for people. It’s a bit like some of the other things we’ve already spoken about on this health and wellbeing series actually. You know, it’s not a one-sizefits-all for everyone, is it? You know, it’s not like I could take, for example, a vitamin D supplement, somebody else could take a vitamin D supplement, but actually maybe vitamin D is the the wrong example, you know, but actually it doesn’t benefit me as much as it would benefit someone else and vice versa. Yeah. And actually, vitamin D is a great example because the darker your skin is, the more vitamin D you need to be taking because the less you can harvest from sunlight. So actually it’s a good example because when I’m working with patients for example I will be giving them a tailored idea about what dose of vitamin D I’d like them as an individual to take based on their ethnic background for example. I think one thing that we do have to be careful of of course in this space I’ll come to you first and then Sophie great to get your thoughts on this. We’re definitely seeing aren’t we we’ve said more people are interested in this space than than ever before. A lot of that is presumably down to social media influencers. That can come with it with its own pitfalls as well. You know, it’s good that people are interested in this space, but if they’re not being taken to the right source of information, that’s obviously a problem. Yeah, absolutely. And there are people on social media who aren’t qualified in this space, but are recommending products. Sometimes they’re really high dose vitamins or supplements like Sophie was saying that bring along real risks with them. I think what’s also really important here is that yes, you can take a supplement, but it’s not going to replace a healthy, balanced diet. So, you can’t have a terrible diet and think you can solve it by popping one or two pills a day. Actually, really, it these can supplement your diet, but they shouldn’t make up your or be the basis of where you’re getting your nutrients from. We always say, don’t we, that there’s there’s no room for nuance on social media. So, as you’ve just said there, Shafali, you know, Sophie, we presumably, you know, and we do see these influencers who are on, you know, these platforms and they go, “Oh, take this and you can eat what you want.” That’s that’s a very simplified message, but often the messages are quite simple, but but not correct. Yeah, totally. And one of the things I think uh people don’t necessarily realize is that anyone can make a supplement. So, I’ve worked in formulating and making supplements for many years. One of the things that people and the industry really is the wild west, right? It really is. Any influencer can go and say, “Can you put this into a into a capsule for me and I’m going to sell it on my social media channels?” And the the manufacturers will happily do that. There’s very little checking for safety, for compliance, for making sure that these things actually contain what they say they do. And that to me is a really terrifying space. The other thing that we notice through social media is trends like gummy supplements, which look cute on social media and can look really appealing, but actually often they’re not doing very much at all. And on all of this then, do we care enough about the science? Do we think obviously the science is so important in the in this area, but you know, we live busy lives. There are so many different sources for information. We’ve already mentioned of course, you know, the social media space, but it can seem quite daunting because if you do want to read all the science behind these supplements, there’s a lot to read. Yeah, it’s difficult for people. And I will say that a lot of the new startups coming into the multivitamin space, they’re all saying that they’re evidence-based. They’re all saying that they’re sciencebacked and all this kind of stuff. There’s no space now for new supplement brands to be just like, oh, here’s a bog standard supplement unless you’re an influencer and you’ve got a huge captive audience, right? And I think there’s some polarity in the consumers in that we have this group who are trying to read everything and trying to understand everything and want things to be evidence-based but are totally overwhelmed by the mega amounts of evidence that’s out there. You know, evidence that perhaps is very poor quality. And the consumer who just goes, I just want to take what I’m told to take because I I’m overwhelmed by it. Right? And those people may well be influenced by social media influences and things like that which is a difficult space for everyone to navigate whether you are someone who really holds on to evidence and is really passionate about it or someone who really doesn’t care about that and just wants to take the latest thing. And sometimes it can be as so often in in any area of you know the world and information at the moment. It’s it’s kind of who shouts the loudest. Right. Totally. And also, we we know that people take things that their parents or their families or their friends have recommended, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Just because it works for one person doesn’t mean it’s going to be appropriate for you. Perfect segue, Shafali, because now let’s let’s talk about, you know, what vitamins and supplements might be right for you. I think this is really really important. And and if we kick off with one that we have mentioned so far, you know, we mentioned vitamin D as an example that that can be very very beneficial for for some people. So Sophie, if we talk about vitamin D, why is it important? Vitamin D is important for many different functions in our body, including things like regulating our immune system, supporting our bone health. It’s also really important for controlling inflammation within the body. And the reason that we talk about it all the time is because it’s really common that we’re deficient in vitamin D. And that’s because we largely generate vitamin D from sunlight. And living in the northern hemisphere, it’s very difficult to get enough sunlight every day to meet our vitamin D needs, particularly during the winter months. And the great news is the government’s now said everyone should be taking vitamin D during the winter months, which, you know, I do various talks in big rooms sometimes and I ask people to put their hands up and if they are taking vitamin D in February and and maybe half the room will be taking it. So, we’re still not quite there in terms of that messaging, but it is such an important nutrient to remember, especially if you live with any inflammatory conditions, autoimmune type conditions. If it becomes deficient, then those kinds of problems can become more out of control. And I would add to that, you know, any bone health problems, if you’re breastfeeding, if you’re pregnant, any time that your body’s under a bit more pressure, vitamin D becomes more and more important. And we use up more of it, so we need to take more of it sometimes, too. And just to reiterate a point that that did come up earlier on in the discussion as well, there are there are certain groups of people who vitamin D would be more beneficial than than others. Yeah. So my husband is Somali, so he’s very dark skinned. So I make him take extra vitamin D even in the summer because I know he’s just not going to be able to get enough from the sun. He works indoors, etc. Whereas myself, I’m a ginger. I don’t need as much vitamin D as other people. My skin is much paler and so I can generate much more vitamin D from smaller amounts of sunlight. And essentially, we’re a good example of the scale that exists within humans, right? So, we all need to be taking slightly more vitamin D. The darker our skin is, the more vitamin D we need to be thinking about taking both through the winter months and through the summer months. Whereas, someone who is much lighter skinned may not need it during those summer months, but may also choose to take it all year round just because it’s part of their supplement stack and there’s not necessarily any harm in doing that. There are other groups as well who are more susceptible to deficiency and that’s if you’re elderly and you spend a lot of time indoors or that when you do go out your skin is covered or if you’re slathered in SPF as well you know you won’t be harvesting enough vitamin D from the sun. So if you fit any of those categories it’s worth taking a supplement all year round as well. Really good to know really good info there. If we move on from from vitamin D then to something else that we all need which is iron. Can we get enough of it from our foods or should we be taking a supplement as well to to help you know give us that that extra boost that we might need? With iron it’s very much case dependent. Right? So I work a lot with the endometriosis community who suffer from very heavy bleeding for example. Those people are much more likely to require more iron than someone who like a man for example who doesn’t have a menstrual cycle. So ultimately it’s about an individual case by case. If you’re eating red meat approximately once or twice a week, if you’re eating some eggs in your diet, the chances are you probably don’t need any iron supplementation. If you’re falling outside of those categories, a blood test from your GP to check if you’re iron deficient is the most important thing to do because blindly supplementing iron when you don’t need it can not be so good for us in terms of our general health. So, it’s something that your GP will happily do for you, especially if you’ve got any symptoms of anemia, so iron deficiency, and then you can supplement appropriately. Can we go into what some of the symptoms are if you if you are iron deficient? Yeah. So, basically, we need iron in our blood. It carries our oxygen around our body. So, if you’re deficient, you might get short of breath. You might feel tired and lethargic. You might find it quite hard to concentrate. So, if you have any of those symptoms, then do get a blood test like Sophie said because actually iron supplements can have quite unpleasant side effects. So, they don’t suit everyone. you don’t necessarily want to be taking them if you don’t need to. Lots of people are going to commercial blood test companies now and not necessarily going to their GP. And for me, a real red flag warning sign of other possible things going on is anemia. And so I worry about people who are potentially going to one of the private blood testing companies, getting that test, and being sold iron supplements without anyone going, “Hang on, why are you anemic? What’s causing that?” Most of the time, it will be a dietary reason, right? people are are much more likely to reduce red meat intake and perhaps not having so many eggs in their diet, for example. But for men in particular, if you’re anemic, really important to find out why and what’s going on. And we don’t want to miss anything, men and women, but you know, generally I want to make sure we understand why someone’s anemic, not just go, “Oh, you’re anemic. Take some supplements.” Same goes for most things actually. Yeah, it might be a quick fix, but actually you’re not get not getting to the root of the problem at all. Absolutely. And Shafali, what about foods that are rich in iron? Obviously, if we don’t necessarily want to be taking supplements or we don’t need to be taking the supplements, what are the foods that we should be eating? Well, like Sophie said, if you’re eating red meat once or twice a week, then you probably are getting enough iron. Sardines, eggs are also good sources of iron. If you’re looking at vegetable sources or vegetarian sources, then actually you’re looking at green leafy veg, dried fruit, beans, lentils, pulses. If you don’t eat meat, then when you do have a vegetable source or a plant-based source of iron, it is advisable to take it with vitamin C because that will help absorption. We will talk about vegans and vegetarians a little bit later on, which is of particular interest to me because my wife is vegetarian. So, we’ll uh we’ll we’ll come on to that a little bit later on and and you know, finding out whether actually if you do live a a vegetarian or or vegan life, whether you do require any additional supplements. But if we talk about vitamin B12, so this is something else of course that is crucial. Most of us should get enough through our diet. Is that is that fair to say? It’s a tricky one with B12. So there are no plant-based sources of B12. Only fortified foods. So where B12 has been added artificially or something called nutritional yeast. So it’s quite a niche product that people would have to use. So within a general omnivorous diet where you’re eating fish, meat, eggs, having some dairy, chances are you don’t need any additional B12, there is a subset of people, and this might be too niche, but it’s something I work a lot with, which is people who’ve had bowel surgery. And the very last part of your small bowel absorbs vitamin B12. And many, many people have that resected or taken out for various different reasons. And so those people can’t ever absorb B12, so they will need injections. and blood testing is reasonably effective, but we ideally need a blood test for active B12, which lots of GPS struggle to do. So, there have been some recent guidelines come out that suggest that actually for GPS, if you are at the lower end of B12, the normal B12 range, and you’re symptomatic of deficiency, that you should have injections to replace it anyway, particularly if you have a reason why you would be B12 deficient, such as having had bowel surgery, for example. And what is the benefits of B12? if you know if as you say you know someone’s had bowel surgery for example they’re not getting B12 what could the impact of that be and why is B12 so important so the most common symptoms of B12 deficiency that I see and I see a lot of it is mouth ulcers or soreness of the tongue something called glossitis where the tongue is swollen and cracked and maybe a different color uh people can get tingling in their hands and feet or sensation changes sometimes it’s like muscle twitches when they’re trying to go to sleep not always but that’s one of the things I’ve noticed that people report coldness Maybe the big thing is fatigue. So people feel really really exhausted and worn out all the time. And when they have that magic B12 injection or we get their B12 up but through other means, it’s like turning the batteries back on and they come back to life. And it’s a wonderful thing as a clinician to to support people with. But also, you know, it might be that someone’s vegan, vegetarian, and not getting enough B12 and taking those supplements can really make a big difference to their quality of life and how they feel as a person. Severe B12 deficiency can cause mental health disturbances, mood changes, depression, anxiety, even forms of paranoia and things like that. So if we miss it, it’s it’s really profound in people. You mentioned vegetarians and vegans there. So I think actually let’s come on to that now. Then you know I mentioned you know my wife is vegetarian as a result. We don’t actually eat a huge amount of well she doesn’t eat any meat obviously but I I myself don’t eat a huge amount of meat in the in the house as part of my regular diet. So should people living that vegetarian vegan lifestyle, Shafali, should they be taking more supplements to, you know, to to replace maybe what they’re not getting otherwise? Yeah, I think we should probably separate vegetarians and vegans here because actually if you’re thinking about the key nutrients in the diet that you might be missing as a vegan, they’re probably iron, um, vitamin B12, zinc, iodine, um, yeah, omega-3, and maybe some calcium. So quite a few. Yeah, quite a few. And actually, if you’re vegetarian, you will be eating some animal-based products such as eggs and cheese. So you will be getting the calcium and the B12, etc. from those foods. Whereas if you’re vegan and you’re avoiding all of those animal sources, then actually it can be quite hard to get some of those nutrients, especially B12 like Sophie said, and you might be needing to supplement. Now, calcium you can get from a vegan diet. And actually, if you’ve cut out dairy products, as long as you’re replacing milk with a calcium fortified plant milk, then actually you might be getting enough. So, it’s not a concern necessarily. Iodine, which is normally found in seafood, you’ll be able to get from seaweed or also fortified plant milks. Breakfast cereals are sometimes fortified with B12 and iron as well. So there are sources, but it’s not as easy to get them. So actually, if you are a vegan, you might want to consider supplementing. Yeah, I totally agree. I think it’s I was really criticized at one point for saying publicly that that it’s much more difficult to meet your nutritional requirements on a vegan diet, and I think now it’s accepted fact, which is great. much more comprehensive and also individualized supplementation is really important if you’re following a vegan diet, especially if you’re thinking about raising your children as vegan or you have an additional health concern. So maybe problems with absorbing nutrients or any, you know, distress with any of your organs, for example. At that point, it’s really important to seek some professional advice on supplementation. The Vegan Society has some excellent advice on supplementation. And so following those sources is really really helpful and and looking for the right level of information for what’s right for you is is key. And just before we get to the break, Sophie, omega-3, if we’re not eating fish, should we have it? Yeah, I’m a big fan of omega-3 supplements. The first thing to say is if you’re eating two portions of oily fish, so salmon, mackerel, sardines a week, you probably don’t need to supplement it. If you’re not, which is 90% of the UK population, I think we would massively benefit from supplementation for various different reasons. If you’re buying an omega-3 supplement, you can get a fish oil based one, which should contain EPA and DHA, the really important components of omega-3, or you can get an algae oilbased one, which is vegan, and that should again on the label, we were looking for EPA and DHA. Those are the two really important elements of omega-3 that we want to be taking. Okay. Well, we’ve talked about some of the supplements that that may be beneficial to to to some people. Well, if we take a quick break now, and then afterwards, we’ll be telling you about the supplements you really don’t need. Every year, which tests thousands of the products that you rely on every day, and we’ve been doing it for over 60 years, which reviews are 100% impartial. We don’t accept freebies from manufacturers, and we have no owners, shareholders, or government departments to answer to. So, our work is on behalf of you, the consumer. In a world of misleading claims and fake reviews, we test everything from everyday items to big purchases so that you don’t have to. We then put them through tests and assessments that go beyond the accepted standard to work out how well these products work for you and what’s not worth your money. And a witch membership not only gets you access to our reviews, it also funds our nonprofit campaigning work like getting scam ads banned on social media and ending broadband and mobile mid-contract price hikes. And right now, podcast listeners can become a Witch member for 50% off the usual price by heading to witch.co.uk/mpodcast offer. [Music] So then, welcome back. We have already touched on some of the vitamins and supplements that could be useful for us, of course, but what about those that we might look to avoid. Shafali, a word that I’d not heard before until we start recording this podcast. Glucosamine. What is it? Okay, so you’ll find glucosamine in supplements that are targeting joint health. But actually, as an ingredient, glucosamine has no authorized health claims. So in a joint health supplement, you’ll also find vitamin C, perhaps vitamin D where the health claims are attributable to that ingredients. It might say helps cartilage, helps collagen production, etc. But actually, it’s not because of the glucosamine, it’s because of those other added ingredients. And something gets a a health claim, a registered health claim when it’s got plenty of evidence to to show and demonstrate and prove that it can do what it’s saying it’s doing, right? And so think something like glucosamine just hasn’t got the level of evidence required for it to be allowed to have any kind of health claims. And that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to do anything for anybody and it’s useless. It just means that probably it’s less effective than some of the other things that we should be taking as a primary benefit. And what companies do really sneakily is to use a health claim, you only have to put put 15% of that nutrient of your NRV, so your requirement of that nutrient into the supplement. So it could be that it’s lots of glucosamine, a tiny bit of vitamin C, but the vitamin C is doing all the lifting in terms of the claims that are made on the packet. Well, off the back of that then, you know, we’ve mentioned vitamin C. I mean, it sounds like the vitamin C is doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to glucosamine in those supplements, but do we need vitamin C? I never recommend people take vitamin C unless for a very specific medical reason they can’t eat any fruits and vegetables which is super rare then I I never tell anyone to take it because you can get it so abundantly from any pretty much any fruits and vegetables that you really just don’t need to take it in supplement form and worst case scenario have a bit of orange juice and you’ll be getting plenty of vitamin C for the day. So it’s not something you know people do spend a huge amount of money on expensive vitamin C supplements. Now we have liposomaal vitamin C which sounds super fancy and beneficial but in reality there’s no great benefit to taking vitamin C in supplement form. You’re much better off just having plenty of plants in your diet. Yeah. And I think with vitamin C it’s a water soluble vitamin so your body can’t store it. So actually once you’ve absorbed what you need for the day, you’re excreting it. So essentially you’ve got really expensive pee. Yeah. So a lot of money potentially that is doing a lot of work. Yeah. Right. Well that that was nice and easy then. So vitamin C, we cannot bother with that one. Okay. So collagen, this is a word we’ve seen on, you know, a lot of skin creams. There are edible supplements I know for this as well. Where do we where do we stand with collagen? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Can it do some good? I know this is especially something we see a lot on social media. Collagen is absolutely huge. So there’s a few things to think about. There were some really interesting studies suggesting that if you have a joint injury uh that taking collagen supplements can help it to heal more quickly and they were really nice controlled studies done in athletes and people who are you know generally being studied for lots of different reasons in in really high quality labs. So we know that if you have an injury taking collagen may help recovery from that injury. My patients now ask me if I’m having surgery should I take collagen and I say we don’t know yet. I probably would if I was having surgery but we don’t know for sure yet. And then we come on to the beauty claims and the beauty stuff. And there is some new and interesting and emerging evidence around collagen and skin health and hair health and nail health. A lot of it is sort of self-reported. So it will say after taking this supplement for 6 weeks, I think my skin looks a bit better or a bit brighter or my wrinkles are less noticeable. The quality of that research is often not great. There is some more interesting research coming through but it’s very early days and people are spending a huge amount of money on collagen supplements and I think we need to take a bit of a measured view to it perhaps even for another year or two before we make decisions about whether it’s something you know certainly not something that I recommend without someone asking me about it first. The simple summary of collagen then is possibly maybe. Yeah. But but also it could by the sounds of it have a bit of a placebo effect whereas you said there’s a lot of self-reporting. So because you’re taking collagen and because you’re using it and you know you spending lots of money on it spending lots of money on it, you you you are willing you know your skin to look better. So therefore you want to say it is working. Yeah. And one of my very clever dermatology colleagues said that if you’re someone who’s spending a lot of money on collagen you’re probably also spending a lot of money on skin care generally moisturizers blah blah blah Botox maybe all the other things. So in fact is it the collagen or is it all the other things you’re doing that is making that difference. And on collagen there’s also vegan collagen. Is that doing anything? Yeah. So we can get marine collagen obviously coming from fish. We can get boine collagen which comes from cows and then we can get vegan collagen peptides. There’s no vegan source of collagen. So it’s not a natural source of collagen in the same way that collagen from cows or fish is. It’s generally made up from different amino acids. So different fractions of protein pieced together to look a bit like collagen. There’s absolutely no evidence that there’s any benefit of vegan collagen. and I will eat my hat if there ever becomes any evidence for vegan collagen in, you know, in proper research studies. You know, as a vegan, it’s really important to get enough protein in your diet from lots of different protein sources and then you’ll get the same sort of benefit you would get from a vegan collagen supplement. Anyway, and Sophie, I know something else that you you were keen to touch on here was IV vitamins as well. Again, very very popular. Yeah, I mean this is a real bug bear of mine, so excuse me while I go off on a tangent, but um there’s a reason why we can’t access our bloodstream as humans. We’re not supposed to be able to and and we do under very special medical conditions, but there’s absolutely no reason or justification for accessing your bloodstream to put vitamins in there unless you’re, you know, in intensive care in hospital and there’s no other way of you accessing vitamins. We have very specially designed and incredible gatekeepers to nutrition in our gut which stop us from getting too much vitamin C into our bloodstream. Too much anything else into our bloodstream. And that they’re there for a reason to protect us from the potential damage that these things can do in high doses entering our bloodstream. So people having them in shopping centers out the back of their hairdresser’s car in the back of the hairdresser’s salon. Nobody should be doing this. I think it’s a real a really dangerous area and I really hope in the very near future it’s highly regulated. The nice guidelines so the national institute of clinical excellence say that nothing should be given intravenously while you have a function to be able to take it through the mouth and in the enti tract and that includes you know fluids that includes any vitamins and minerals. It’s a really high-risisk procedure. We’ve seen celebrities where it’s gone wrong. We’ve seen people die from having introvenous vitamin drips. I really hope very soon it’s regulated, but I really want to push everybody away from doing that at any point in their life unless it’s medically necessary. Really, really important. Really, really important. So, thank you for saying that, Sophie. And we talked earlier on, didn’t we, about the boom of these supplements on social media? But where should we actually be buying them from? And also, as a secondary question to that, how can you tell what is a good supplement? So, first of all, I’d say if you’re buying your supplements, buy them from a reputable retailer or um outlet. You know, we’ve seen on online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, etc. really high dose supplements that you shouldn’t really be buying. So, try and buy from a trusted brand. Um, and also get your advice from a trusted brand. So, if you’re not speaking to a health professional, look on the NHS website to see what the recommended daily dose is, you know, don’t get it from your favorite celebrity on Instagram because actually they are not trained in this. They’re just being paid to promote a product. at which Sophie and I are actually working on a project where we are starting to look at the supplement industry and look at products that are on shelves and we’ve created an evaluation framework where we’re going to be judging them on the nutrients that are in the supplements, the bioavailability of those nutrients, the dose in the supplement, and also what other additives are in these supplements. So hopefully we’re going to get to a stage fairly soon where we can rank a range of supplements from good to bad. So watch this space on that one. But it does sound like a really exciting piece of work because we will be able to say yes this works. Yes, this doesn’t work. We won’t be saying it works. We’ll say this is better than this one. There we go. Perfect. That’s why Shafali does the job that she does. It is exciting and I you know I think people really want it. People want to be making good decisions, but the industry is so tricky to navigate for consumers that it’s really nice to be able to lead people in the right direction and actually to have the chance to look at some of these supplements and think, “What have you done or great product that’s really nice?” And Sophie, as well, just to touch on, you know, how how could somebody know how can somebody find out that they would benefit from taking a supplement? Yeah, really good question. I think, you know, as a dietitian, my first instinct is always to say, go and see a dietitian and get your diet analyzed and look at what your lifestyle looks like and and what sort of level of nutrients you may need to supplement in order to compensate for the lifestyle that you lead or the diet that you’re having or whatever it might be. But, you know, as a general regular consumer, I think it is really difficult for people to understand what that might be. As we’ve said before, there is some great guidance from the vegan society. For example, if you did some searches for blogs from dieticians or regulated health information, you might find out what you might need to supplement if you’ve cut out dairy or if you don’t eat fish, for example. But it is difficult for people to navigate on their own. And it’s so easy to be led down the path of marketing information and people wanting to sell you things. Before you know it, you’ve gone from looking at an ev evidence-based source and looking at something reliable to something that’s just trying to push supplements at you. And I think it’s really important to reiterate here that supplements aren’t benign. You know, most of them that you buy on the high street aren’t going to cause you harm, but actually there are some ingredients that can interact with medications you’re taking. So if you are on regular medication, then don’t add a supplement into the mix without checking with your doctor or pharmacist. Shafali Sophie, it has been really really useful. I mean for me hopefully as well for the listeners as well just listening to to us navigate what is often you know a really confusing world. So thank you very much for doing that and yeah Sophie thank you for being here. Thank you very much for having me and Shafali as ever. Thanks very much. [Music] Thanks. Thanks for listening to this podcast from Witch the UK’s consumer champion. You can find plenty more advice about what we discussed today in the show notes. There you’ll also find a link to become a Witch member for 50% off the usual price. An offer exclusively available to you, our podcast listeners. 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