aging and Development, Health Supple- ment Retailer and Delicious Living.

The U. S. population is drastically mal-nourished. According to the latest A. C. Nielsen survey, only 12 % of Americans claim to eat the 5 recommended servings of fruits and vegetables each day (Warner, 2004). And approximately 1/3 of the calo-ries that people do consume are from nu-trient-poor foods such as alcohol and soda (Yang, 2004). This combination has led to a population that consumes too few nutri-ents, which according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Associa-tion (Fletcher, 2002) puts people at risk for long-term health concerns. With Americans eating fewer healthy foods, taking a daily multiple is one way for people to increase their intake of nutri-ents. But the search for what defines a good multiple can be confusing, even to health care professionals. The Confusing U.S. Government Standards Scientists first recognized the need for vi-tamins in the early 1900s (Levenstein, 1993). But setting U. S. government stan-dards for vitamins and minerals didn’t start until healthy soldiers were needed to fight World War II. And when a committee of scientists was asked to determine the levels of nutrients needed to maintain good health they could only agree on “rec-ommended allowances ” to prevent defi-ciency with a wide margin of safety. In 1941, these allowances became the firs