The Army is “concerned” about excessive supplement use among soldiers

Uh oh…the U.S. Army is getting a little too curious about supplement use by soldiers.

According to Edward Zambraski, Ph.D. — the Division Chief of the Military Performance Division of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine — the Army isn’t concerned about soldiers using supplements.

The concern is excess supplement use.

A recent Army survey shows that about half of Army personnel spend an average of $38 per month on supplements.

Okay…where’s the “excess?”

My multivitamin costs $30 a month. Throw in a good quality fish oil, additional vitamins D, C, E, a B-complex, and maybe a couple of others and it would add up to a lot more than $38.

If you ask me, the real concern here is that a whopping 47 percent don’t take any supplements at all.

I know if I were in a war zone I would want to make sure I was getting as much high quality nutrition as possible. That’s something you might miss out on in an MRE, which, from what I hear, is barely palatable, and often — how should I put this? — has a tendency to bind you up.

In an interview with NutraIngredients-USA, Dr. Zambraski said that when a nutritional need is identified, the Army would rather provide it in food than in pill form.

And he adds: “The advantage is that there is a lot we don’t know about food and all the bioactives molecules that may be in it, so if we can provide it through a food there may be some interactions that are more beneficial that we may lose with a simple supplement for a given nutrient.”

I think that might be some kind of Army mind control because my brain just went blank. But if I had to guess the hidden meaning there, it would go something like this: “We’re going to start controlling soldiers’ supplement intake.”

That sounds about right. Not good, but right.

Source:
“US Army ‘concerned’ over excessive supplement use amongst soldiers” Stephen Daniells, NutraIngredients-USA, 6/20/11, nutraingredients-usa.com