Danger seen in herbs and vitamins

Press, 3 November 1984, Page 6

Danger seen in herbs and vitamins

PA Auckland Many vitamins and herbs sold in New Zealand health food shops were potentially dangerous and should carry warnings on. the labels, a visiting American nutritionist has said. Dr Victor Herbert, chairman of the department of medicine at Hahnemann University in Philadelphia and a member of the Food ' and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences, is in New Zealand for a twoday visit. Dr Herbert said that New Zealand should have laws

requiring labelling of vitamin products with warnings about potential toxicity and recommended daily dosage. People tended to believe anything natural could not be harmful and that more was always better, he said. On a visit to a local health food shop he found: ® 250 mg tablets of vitamin 86. The toxicity of B 6 started at 200 mg, he said. @ IOOOmg vitamin C tablets which he said could cause kidney damage. @ A mixture of salts for acne and blemishes which he said had no value against the disorders.

■ @ Vitamin E tablets at : doses more than 20 times I the recommended daily allowance. s The Health Department’s t deputy director of clinical ; services, Dr Bob Boyd, said that there was not enough I proof to require warning labels. i The department had rei stricted large doses of vitamin A and D to prescription j only when claims of toxicity > were indisputable. But he said that Dr Her- ■ bert’s papers on the subject i were exceedingly good and t deserved public debate. The chief dietician at

Christchurch Hospital, Mrs Pamela Williams said last i evening that many prepara- i tions sold as health food should have a lot more l factual information on the i labels. < i “Some of them are downright dangerous,” she said. It depended on how high a dosage people took as to ! how they were affected. Children were more sus- < ceptible to vitamin tablets I as their tolerance levels 1 I were low and they could 1 suffer bad side effects. 1 Products such as “an in- i

-\Z ■ - ‘ . nocent IOOOmg vitamin Citablet” could . have drastic' effects if they were taken* regularly for long enough. Such a high dose of vitamin C over a length of time 1 could change the body’s 1 metabolism and could result in scurvy if the person stopped the dosage suddenly. Mre Williams said that Dr .-Herbert was one of the best outspoken nutritionists in the United States. It had been hoped that he could have visited Christchurch, but that do not work out, she said.