David L. Kaplan
Opposed to the dissolution criteria used for water-soluble vitamins, the hierarchy for The commonly accepted definition of bioavailability is that the proportion of the nutrient that's digested, absorbed and metabolized through normal pathways. Consequently, it's not enough to understand what proportion of a nutrient is present during a dietary supplement; the more important issue is what proportion of that present is bioavailable. a standard belief regarding bioavailability of dietary supplements is that they need to be in solution to be absorbed within the body. However, the veracity of this axiom with reference to commercially available supplements was recently called into question. Shangraw (1990) conducted studies on the utilization of calcium salts as fillers for tablets and capsules and observed that additionally to not dissolving in many cases the calcium salt tablets took as long as 4–6 h even to disintegrate. Moreover, Shangraw (1990) was ready to extend these observations beyond calcium supplements to incorporate several single vitamin also as multivitamin and mineral preparations.
