What is a supplement?

‘A thing added to something else in order to complete or enhance it’. If you were to attend a public lecture, you would typically receive a handout. This handout would perhaps outline the talk, possibly define some terms and provide a references list so you can fact check what you have learned. This handout is a supplement to the talk: an additional add-on which improves the whole experience to a small yet meaningful degree by providing something not included in the talk itself. This is generally how nutritional supplements should be viewed, too.

Looking back at our hierarchy of nutritional importance you can see that supplements occupy the higher most point of the pyramid. This tells you not only that supplements are the last thing you should think about after everything else has been considered, but that nutritional supplements are likely to make a small difference even when they do make one. If you are currently consuming a diet which contains fewer or more calories than needed, and that is not geared towards your macronutrient requirements, while being low on fibre, you aren’t likely to be as healthy as you could otherwise be, even with the use of a multivitamin or protein powder.

We are not trying to discourage you from supplement use, but rather we are looking to state from the outset that although supplements often hold some mystique and appear uniquely and disproportionately interesting compared to your vegetable consumption or that extra half hour of sleep, they aren’t. If, however, your current diet is providing almost everything you need in accordance with what has already been covered but it doesn’t give you enough calcium, zinc or vitamin D for example, then this small imperfection can be ironed out through targeted supplement use, complimenting and completing the whole.

There is a multitude of ways that supplements can be divided and categorised depending on the situation in which you are discussing them, but for our purposes we will talk about supplements in terms of the two clear categories outlined below.