November 13, 2024 – Federal oversight of dangerous dietary supplements will likely be eroded under a new Trump administration, according to experts affiliated with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Bryn Austin, professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and director of the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED), and Amanda Raffoul, assistant professor in nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto and affiliated faculty with STRIPED, outlined their concerns in a Nov. 11 First Opinion piece in STAT.

They noted that, prior to the election, Trump said he’d let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on federal health agencies. RFK Jr. has spoken out against vaccines and claimed on the X platform that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is trying to suppress various supplements. But Austin and Raffoul said that research has made clear that dietary supplements—particularly those that falsely claim they’ll promote weight loss or build muscles—can lead to problems such as liver damage and eating disorders.

“In the absence of meaningful regulation from the FDA, the supplement industry will no doubt take Kennedy’s stance as a free pass to relentlessly promote its deceptive and predatory products,” the co-authors wrote.

Austin and Raffoul voiced hope that individual states would pass legislation to protect people—particularly children—from harmful supplements, as New York did last spring.

Noting that the supplements industry is “wealthy and ruthless,” the co-authors said that it’s important for people to be aware of the industry’s tactics, such as pushing pseudoscience, deliberately blurring facts, and undermining scientists who challenge industry—including scientists at STRIPED.

Wrote Austin and Raffoul, “It’s incumbent on all of us to … be prepared to push back to protect our children’s health.”

Read the STAT First Opinion piece: A new Trump administration will further loosen already-lax rules on supplements

Photo: iStock/TrongNguyen