One of the biggest controversies in nutrition centers on the safety and effectiveness of dietary supplements. Many companies tout the effectiveness of various supplements for a wide range of health conditions. Proper nutrition is particularly important for young people who are still growing in their teen years and early 20's.
The FDA is a federal agency responsible for the safety of the food and medicines we consume every day. When a company wants to produce a new drug for heart disease they have to first convince the FDA that the drug is effective and safe. This is not true in the case of dietary supplements. A company that wants to produce a new dietary supplement simply does so without any government oversight. The FDA is still responsible for the safety of that product but they have to wait till side effects appear in the general public. Then it's the responsibility of the FDA to prove that the supplement is harmful before they can ban it. At no time does the FDA even consider the effectiveness of the supplement. It may not work at all.
Of course many people have been taking dietary supplements for hundreds or even thousands of years without obvious ill effects. A drug company often produces a compound never used before with completely unknown potential side effects. Such a drug may take nearly a billion dollars of testing to prove it is safe and effective thus making the drug very expensive to a patient. A dietary supplement on the other hand is free of such regulatory expense so they tend to be very cheap by comparison.
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