More than half of US adults, 57.6 percent, took a dietary supplement in the past 30 days, and use climbs to roughly 8 in 10 women aged 60 and over (CDC NHANES, 2017-2018).

Our analysis pulls three federal sources into one picture: who takes supplements (CDC NHANES), which products dominate the federal adverse-event record (FDA CAERS), and what the evidence actually supports for the most-used products (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements). The headline is a market that is now mainstream and aging, paired with a safety record that is real but widely misread.

Key findings

  • Most adults are supplement users. 57.6 percent of US adults aged 20 and over used a dietary supplement in the past 30 days (CDC NHANES, 2017-2018).
  • Women lead men by 13 points. 63.8 percent of women used a supplement versus 50.8 percent of men (CDC NHANES, 2017-2018).
  • Use rises sharply with age. Among women it climbs from 49.0 percent (ages 20-39) to 80.2 percent (60 and over); among men, from 35.9 percent to 67.3 percent (CDC NHANES, 2017-2018).
  • Multivitamins still lead, vitamin D and omega-3 surge with age. Among adults 60 and over, 39.4 percent used a multivitamin-mineral product, 36.9 percent vitamin D, and 21.8 percent omega-3s (CDC NHANES, 2017-2018).
  • A decade of steady growth. Age-adjusted use rose from 48.4 percent (2007-2008) to 56.1 percent (2017-2018), a significant increasing trend (CDC NHANES).
  • Supplements top the federal food-safety complaint file. Products in the vitamin, mineral, protein, and unconventional-diet category were named as the suspect product in 54,221 reports, the single largest category in FDA CAERS, ahead of cosmetics (52,214). A report does not establish that a product caused harm (FDA CAERS, via openFDA, data through May 2026).

Most adults are supplement users

Dietary supplements are no longer a niche habit. In 2017-2018, the most recent completed cycle of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 57.6 percent of US adults aged 20 and over reported using at least one dietary supplement in the prior 30 days. This is a physical-exam survey of a nationally representative sample, not a self-selected online poll, which makes it the most authoritative read on national prevalence.

Use is also stacked. Among all adults, 22.5 percent used one product, while a third used two or more (13.8 percent used two, 7.5 percent used three, and 13.8 percent used four or more). The polypharmacy of the supplement aisle, several products taken at once, is now the norm for a large share of the country.

By sex

The gap between women and men is wide and consistent. In 2017-2018, 63.8 percent of women used a dietary supplement versus 50.8 percent of men, a 13-point difference. Women are the center of gravity for this market, and any product, content, or safety message that ignores that skew is misreading the audience.

By age

The clearest pattern in the data is age. Supplement use rises steeply across the lifespan for both sexes. Among women, use climbs from 49.0 percent in the 20-39 group to 80.2 percent among those 60 and over. Among men, it rises from 35.9 percent to 67.3 percent across the same span. Four in five older women and two in three older men are supplement users. As the US population ages, the base of regular supplement consumers widens with it.

Most-common supplements

NHANES reports the leading product types by age group rather than as a single national figure, and the same three categories dominate at every age: multivitamin-mineral products, vitamin D, and omega-3 fatty acids.

The age gradient is steepest for the single-nutrient products. Multivitamin-mineral use runs 24.0 percent (ages 20-39), 29.8 percent (40-59), and 39.4 percent (60 and over). Vitamin D nearly sextuples across the lifespan, from 6.7 percent to 17.4 percent to 36.9 percent. Omega-3 use roughly quadruples, from 5.4 percent to 12.5 percent to 21.8 percent. Older adults are not just more likely to supplement, they reach for targeted single nutrients far more than younger ones do.

The safety signal

The federal safety record is where the supplement story gets misread most often. FDA’s CFSAN Adverse Event Reporting System (CAERS) is the post-market surveillance file for foods, dietary supplements, and cosmetics, fed by consumers, healthcare practitioners, voluntary industry reports, and mandatory dietary-supplement industry reports. The full public dataset holds 149,945 reports (last updated 14 May 2026).

Within it, products in the vitamin, mineral, protein, and unconventional-diet category, the bucket that captures most dietary supplements, were named as the suspect product in 54,221 reports. That is the single largest category in the entire file, ahead of cosmetics (52,214) and far ahead of any conventional-food category. Among those supplement-suspect reports, the recorded outcomes include 12,842 hospitalizations, 7,720 emergency-room visits, and 4,025 logged as life-threatening.

These numbers demand a hard caveat. CAERS is a passive reporting system. In FDA’s own words, submission of an adverse event report does not constitute an admission that a product caused or contributed to an event, and the data are unvalidated. A report is a signal, not a proven harm, and counts are shaped by reporting behavior, product popularity, and media attention as much as by underlying risk. The honest reading: supplements generate more federal adverse-event reports than any other food category, that volume warrants attention, and the file cannot tell us how many products actually caused the events described.

An evidence note

Popularity and proven benefit are not the same thing, and the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements is candid about the gap for the three most-used products.

Multivitamins. A US Preventive Services Task Force review spanning 78 trials and more than 320,000 participants found vitamin and mineral supplements had little or no benefit in preventing cancer, cardiovascular disease, and death in well-nourished adults.

Vitamin D. The VITAL trial, with 25,871 participants, found that daily vitamin D3 did not reduce the incidence of cancer or major cardiovascular events in people without prior disease.

Omega-3. In the same trial, omega-3 supplements did not significantly reduce the combined rate of major cardiovascular events over a median 5.3 years, though some specific outcomes showed reductions in subgroups.

The pattern is consistent: for the well-nourished general population, the most-used supplements show limited evidence of preventing chronic disease, even as the most established benefits, such as correcting documented deficiencies, remain real.

Methodology and sources

Sources and years.

  • CDC NHANES, as reported in NCHS Data Brief No. 399, “Dietary Supplement Use Among Adults: United States, 2017-2018” (Mishra, Stierman, Gahche, Potischman; 2021). All prevalence, sex, age, product-type, and trend figures. Trend figures span survey cycles 2007-2008 through 2017-2018.
  • FDA CFSAN Adverse Event Reporting System (CAERS), accessed via the openFDA food/event API. Category and outcome counts reflect reports in which a product was assigned the “Suspect” role. Dataset last updated 14 May 2026; total 149,945 reports.
  • NIH Office of Dietary Supplements fact sheets (Multivitamin/Mineral, Vitamin D, Omega-3), with the cited USPSTF review and VITAL trial.

Extraction date. All figures retrieved and verified on 10 June 2026.

Method. Prevalence and demographic figures are quoted directly from NCHS Data Brief No. 399. The CAERS category and outcome counts were queried live from the openFDA API and are reproducible: category counts via search=products.role:Suspect&count=products.industry_name.exact; outcomes via the same suspect filter on the supplement category with count=outcomes.exact.

Cited vs derived. NHANES, FDA, and ODS figures are cited directly. The “two or more products” figure (a third of adults) is a derived sum of the brief’s reported sub-categories (13.8 + 7.5 + 13.8 percent). The CAERS cross-category finding (supplements as the single largest suspect category) is our own analysis of the openFDA data.

Limitations. NHANES is cross-sectional and based on self-report of use over the prior 30 days. NHANES reports leading product types by age group, not as a single national prevalence. CAERS is passive surveillance: reports are unvalidated, do not establish causation, and category counts are influenced by product popularity and reporting behavior. The CAERS category labelled “Vit/Min/Prot/Unconv Diet” is broader than dietary supplements alone. ODS evidence summaries reflect the general well-nourished population and do not address treatment of diagnosed deficiencies. This report is educational and is not medical advice.

Cite this report

Plain: TheWellnessGPT, “The State of Supplements 2026,” published 10 June 2026. https://thewellnessgpt.com/reports/state-of-supplements-2026/

APA: TheWellnessGPT. (2026, June 10). The state of supplements 2026. https://thewellnessgpt.com/reports/state-of-supplements-2026/