A Guide to Understanding Dietary Supplements

The size of this book (over 700 pages) gives the reader an immediate impression of comprehensiveness. The question is, does it live up to this expectation? The book has a clear structure and is easy to read. Its 17 chapters relate to indications from weight loss to diabetes. The reader is consistently told about the evidence, not least that relating to efficacy and safety. References are supplied as well. Who is this book aimed at? This was a question I asked myself repeatedly when reading it. The text clearly implies that the target audience is the lay public, while the references and any chemical formulae suggest otherwise. This type of inconsistency is found in other respects as well. Often the evidence is based on original data or systematic reviews but in other sections it is based on much softer evidence. Often the evidence seems comprehensive but occasionally one finds embarrassing omissions (no mention of chromium in the weight loss section, for instance). Often the evidence is correct but in some sections it is clearly not (for instance in the chapter on green-lipped mussel for ‘joint health’). Given these frequent and unexplained inconsistencies my final verdict is cautiously positive: I have seen many books for the lay public that are much worse; luckily, however, there are also some that are much better.