7 Things You Need to Know About Dietary Supplements

Do they make a difference? Which brands can you trust? Keep these best practices in mind.

- By Kate Rockwood

Crammed vitamin aisles at local drugstores...social media ads hawking trendy powders and elixirs...websites devoted to delivering gummies, multis and capsules with a simple click. Making sense of all these nutrients, herbs and compounds can be overwhelming and confusing - there are just so many! The industry is projected to be worth nearly $200 billion worldwide by 2025, according to a recent report in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. To help you navigate the supplement section, here are some of the biggest vitamin and supplement must-knows so you can feel confident in choosing the right one for you.

Eat, don't just pop.

Multivitamins won't counteract a poor diet. "People forget that they are supposed to supplement food, not replace it," says Monica Auslander Moreno, R.D.N., lead dietitian of Essence Nutrition in Miami. Vitamin supplements are useful to enhance a well-balanced diet loaded with nutritious vegetables, fruits, whole grains and proteins and to fill in nutrient gaps - not to offset too many boozy nights and drive-through meals. But despite the food-first mantra nutrition experts preach, more than half of Americans rely on supplements to try to meet their needs. "People think it's easier to pop a pill than to address a nutrition-knowledge gap or an intake shortfall," says Auslander Moreno.