Half of us take some kind of nutritional supplement daily. And sales of these over-the-counter pills are on the rise in the United States, raking in $25 billion annually for the supplement industry. Among the most popular supplements are multivitamins, which we’re told (and apparently believe) we must take daily to make up for the "lost" nutrients we're not getting in the foods we eat.
But is there any truth to that widely held prescription for health? Does the typical American really need vitamin and mineral supplements? No, argues science writer Emily Anthes in an article published last week in the online publication Slate. Not only have recent studies raised serious doubts about the health benefits, if any, of supplemental vitamins and minerals, they also suggest that popping them daily could pose some real medical risks.
[R]esearch on a wide variety of patient populations and medical conditions has failed to find much evidence that multivitamins … prevent major chronic diseases in healthy people. The most recent knock came this spring, when a study of more than 160,000 post-menopausal women, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that the all-in-one pills did not prevent cancer, heart attacks, or strokes and did not reduce overall mortality.
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