European Union to ban many supplement ingredients in August; some 5,000 products likely to be affected

• If you take a daily vitamin and mineral supplement, you may want to stock up before August 1.
• For after that date, the shelves of your local health food shop could be decidedly bare as tablets containing selenium yeast, boron, chromium picolinate and a further 300 nutrients are withdrawn from sale.
• The European Food Supplements Directive, which comes into force at midnight on July 31, outlaws products containing ingredients not on its "positive list" of 140 permitted substances.
• "The August legislation will have a major impact," says David Adams, director of the Health Food Manufacturers' Association (HFMA), which represents producers and suppliers such as Holland & Barrett, Solgar and Biocare.
• Jenny Seagrove, now starring in BBC TV's Judge John Deed, a supporter of the campaign by the Consumers for Health Choice (CHC), says she is "angry, desolate and bewildered" by the forthcoming legislation.
• The suggestion is that supplements fill the gaps left by a hurried diet and act as insurance against illness.
• Campaigners argue that modern food is a shadow of what it was 50 years ago because of the way it is produced.
• There are groups of people, however, highlighted in the 2004 National Diet and Nutrition Survey (a study carried out periodiocally by the Food Standards Agency), who do need supplements.
• "It is true that many people don't eat the healthy balanced diet recommended for good health," says Lyndel Costain, a dietitian and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association.
• "Teenage girls are at higher risk of poor intakes of certain vitamins and minerals such as iron, calcium and magnesium.