Vitamin Supplements: Good Or Bad?
I’m going to say two words that may bring up bad memories: Flintstones Chewables.
I know, I’m sorry for the taste bud flashbacks as you now relive having to take those granite-sized slabs of fake candy every morning because your mum told you they were the only thing keeping you from contracting polio.
Or was it scurvy?
Or maybe it was Yersinia pestis?
Whatever it was, it’s partly due to that practice as a child why you’re among half of all American adults who waste more than $14.3B per year on vitamin or mineral supplements.
Yeah, I said waste!
Vitamins and minerals are essential nutrients that perform a myriad of functions that help keep the body healthy and working properly.1Vitamins are made by animals and plants, whereas minerals are derived from the earth, soil, and water and are absorbed by plant life. They can be obtained from whole grains, beans and legumes, and meat, and dairy products, but it’s generally advised that you meet your vitamin and mineral needs by consuming 1.5-2 cups of fruits and 2-3 cups of vegetables per day. However, the average American adult falls far short of eating the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables by a wide margin.2According to the CDC, only 1 in 10 adults eat enough fruits and vegetables. As such, people turn to vitamin and mineral supplements to ensure that the body gets the vitamins and minerals it needs. Moreover, not only are these products taken to fill nutrient gaps but mostly as a preventative measure against certain health conditions, as they’re generally marketed to be.
While marketers tend to be a pretty honest bunch, the case of supplemental vitamins and minerals appears to be the rare exception where they’re full of shit, as the evidence is mixed on a lot of the claims, if no connection has been found at all. Multivitamins and individual vitamins and minerals don’t have a meaningful effect on reducing the risk of heart disease, cancer, memory loss, or an early death.3A “multivitamin” is defined as a product that contains 10 or more vitamins, minerals, or both.
In fact, not only does vitamin A, C, and E, for example, fail to reduce the risk of cancer, but several studies show that those who take them die at higher rates of cancer than those who don’t. Similar goes for calcium, as those who supplement with the mineral regularly have an exceedingly higher rate of heart disease than their non-supplement using counterparts.
One simple reason why mortality rises with increased supplement use is that the dose makes the poison, as so many foods are fortified with vitamins and minerals that routine supplementation of a nutrient you’re nowhere deficient in can take it out of its range of harmlessness to toxicity.4For instance, a cougar who’s worried about her hips withstanding the jackhammer pounding of the young guys she sleeps with might take a calcium supplement every morning to help preserve her bones. Let’s say the pill has 500 mg of calcium. After that, she takes a One-A-Day Women’s Menopause Formula Multivitamin and eats a bowl of Total with half a cup of skim milk. That’s an additional 300 mgs of calcium in the multivitamin, about 1000mg in the cereal, and 150mg in the milk. That amounts to 1950 mg of calcium, which puts her very close to the daily limit of 2000 mg, all by the morning and with more food to go that will more than likely place her over the recommended intake.
If supplemental vitamins and minerals are useless, then what are you to do?
What are you to do?!
Well, nothing really.
Unless your diet only consists of fast food cuisine, then you should already get all of your vitamin and mineral needs from food without the need for supplementation.5And if you already eat a healthy diet, there’s no need to pop vitamins and minerals because taking more of them doesn’t confer any added benefits. In fact, as discussed above, attempting to be an overachiever in this regard can be deleterious to your health. But if your diet DOES only consist of shit from a fast food menu, then you should probably start eating more produce, low-fat dairy, whole grains, and protein. Yeah, try that instead of relying on a pill to fix your shitty diet!
While you don’t need vitamin or mineral pills, tablets, chewable gummies, powders, and liquids, this isn’t to say that there isn’t a time and place for them.
For example, if you have a nutrient deficiency, then supplementing with vitamins and minerals might make sense. However, just take the nutrient that you’re deficient in individually rather than in combination with others as part of a multivitamin. Moreover, a deficiency should be determined by a physician based on symptoms and lifestyle factors, if not by blood work.
Other candidates are members of high-risk groups for certain medical issues, some of which include vegans who might need supplemental B12, a naturally occurring vitamin only found in animal-based products but may be added to meat substitutes and nutritional yeast that helps combat anemia. There’s also expectant mothers and women who are trying to get pregnant, as they should supplement with folate and folic acid to help prevent birth defects. And lastly, there are people who’ve already been diagnosed with a medical condition, like osteoporosis, which may require more vitamin D and calcium than they get from their diet.