Use of Vitamins, Minerals, and Other Dietary Supplements by 17- and 18-Year-Old Students in Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Various types of dietary suplements (DS) are popularly taken by young individuals. We sur-veyed 1,190 Korean senior high school third grade students for their DS use, motivational fac-tors for this use, and potential dietary consequences of vitamin/mineral suplement (VMS)use. The use prevalence of DS including VMS, tonic medicines, manufactured health foodsuplements, cordial food suplements, and drink rehabilitators was 54%. VMS were takenmost frequently, followed by tonic medicines and manufactured health food suplements.VMS use was highest in individuals who had a significant concern for their overall healthand in those from families with a high socioeconomic level and with parental use of DS. To-tal daily study time of DS users was only slightly longer than that of nonusers. The VMSmost frequently used were vitamin C and multivitamins. More than 46% of other DS users,and 58% of VMS users, had increased their intake of suplements during third grade rela-tive to the previous year. VMS users had a more positive view of the potential health bene-fit of VMS than did nonusers. Vitamin and mineral intakes from VMS occurred over a widerange, with mean intakes typically exceeding the Korean and Canadian-U.S. RecommendedDietary Allowances. For a significant number of individuals, intakes of vitamin A, niacin,folic acid, vitamin C, calcium, iron, and zinc exceeded the Tolerable Uper Intake Levels.Given the widespread use of DS by older tenagers, the contribution of these suplementsto their overall health and well-being is a subject that clearly merits aditional study.27