While multivitamins aren’t helpful, at least they’re not harmful. But the money people spend on them could be better spent on purchasing healthy foods, according to Dr Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Researchers analysed 84 studies involving nearly 700,000 people. Their review, published in JAMA, found little or no evidence that taking vitamin and mineral supplements helps prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease that can lead to heart attacks and stroke, nor do they help prevent an early death.
“Most people would be better off just drinking a full glass of water and skipping the vitamin,” said Cohen, an expert in dietary supplement research and regulation. “We have good evidence that for the vast majority of people, taking multivitamins won’t help you,” he added. There are some exceptions, however. Highly restrictive diets and gastrointestinal conditions, or certain weight-loss surgeries that cause poor nutrient absorption, are examples of reasons why a multivitamin or individual vitamins might be recommended.
A daily vitamin D supplement may be necessary when a person gets insufficient sun exposure. Your doctor may recommend an iron supplement if you have a low red blood cell count (anaemia). Surveys suggest people take vitamins to stay healthy, feel more energetic, or gain peace of mind. These beliefs stem from a powerful narrative about vitamins being healthy and natural that dates back nearly a century. “This narrative appeals to many groups in our population, including people who are progressive vegetarians and also to conservatives,” Cohen said.
Vitamins are very inexpensive to make, so the companies can sink lots of money into advertising, he noted. But because the FDA regulates dietary supplements as food and not as prescription, the agency only monitors claims regarding the treatment of disease.
