Current trends of dietary supplements among fitness enthusiasts

Dietary supplement are concentrated form of nutrients along with their nutritional properties. They are consumed as an additional substance with a regular diet. It comes in the form of one or a mixture of two compounds like vitamins and multivitamins. It fulfils the nutritional gap that may occur due to many reasons like specific cuts in diet, nutritional deficiency, inadequate intake diet and many more. The types of dietary supplements that are available are vitamins, minerals, proteins, fat, carbohydrates, multivitamins, minerals, multi-minerals, herbs and many more. Dietary supplements are mainly preferred by health-conscious people to maintain their health. Today everyone is using dietary supplements for different reasons like to fulfil special nutrient demands for high levels of physical activity, boost immunity, increase the level of energy, enhancement of performance, muscular growth, weight gain/loss. The various forms of dietary supplements are available in the market such as powder, capsules, bars, drinks, tablets and many more.

The main purpose of this study was to determine the current trends of dietary supplement intake among fitness enthusiasts.

The collection of data has been done through a pre tested self-designed questionnaire. The data has been collected via online mode because of constraints of physical connectivity due to pandemic.

Overall 72 participants participated in this research. Out of them, 41 respondents have reported the types of dietary supplements they consume. The most consumed dietary supplements were whey protein (31.7%), protein powder (31.7%), multivitamin (12.2%), energy drinks (7.3%), vitamin B (2.4%), vitamin D (2.4%), vitamin E (2.4%), creatinine (2.4%), others (2.4%) and (4.9%) reported no consumption of supplements.

From this study we can conclude that protein supplements are being used mostly by the fitness enthusiasts for body building, muscle gain and strength, reduce body fat, improve sports performance, improve health and gaining muscle mass. Instant energy drinks and vitamin supplements were also reported to be beneficial by the participants