Myth #4: “My vitamins will fill the gaps in my diet and prevent disease.”

A vitamin benefit chart doesn’t tell the whole story. Vitamins are important, but the kind usable by the human body comes in food, in the synergistic and complex amounts found in nature.

I used to take a very expensive, highly touted comprehensive supplement. At the same time, I used Diet Power software to log my food intake for several months. The software analyzed the amounts I needed of each nutrient (for my age and gender) compared to my actual consumption of food. I got an “A” virtually every day based on my diet. If I took the supplements, twice as recommended, my score went to an “F” as soon as I logged them! I was getting much more than I needed of many nutrients. Even taking the supplement once a day was far too much in at least some areas, much of the time. I haven’t popped a vitamin in four years, and my health has never been better.

Despite what you might see in a vitamin benefit chart, don’t be reckless. This year a government study of 300,000 men found that taking more than one multivitamin a day doubled a man’s risk of dying from prostate cancer. One of the researchers, Dr. Christian Gluud, said, “The findings lend further credence to the possibility of harm associated with increased use of supplements.” People eating refined foods from boxes, bags, and cans may have an even bigger overdose of chemical vitamins and minerals because of “fortified” and “enriched” synthetic additives.

One hundred years ago, diseases like scurvy (related to a Vita C deficiency) introduced high Vita C recommendations from the government and an eventual market for synthetic, pill-form nutrients. Now that we no longer have sailors stuck on a ship for nine months straight with a nutritionally deficient food supply, we have the strange aftereffects of those circumstances. Even with our terrible diet, we have virtually no Vita C- or iron-deficiency diseases in the first world. What we do have is a nation of pill poppers hoping (against evidence) that taking pretty random amounts of isolated, synthetic nutrients will save them from disease.

A 2000 study of 170,000 people published in the medical journal The Lancet found that vitamin supplements do no good against six types of cancer or any other disease (including heart disease and stroke). In fact, a statistically small correlation was noted that those taking supplements had 6% higher morbidity than those taking dummy pills. While this study is not conclusive that people are dying from supplement use, it should at least give pill poppers pause.

The Institute of Medicine, after conducting a four-year review into the massive body of research on vitamin supplements, recommended a diet of at least 5 fruits and vegetables instead. (GreenSmoothieGirl reminds you that even a pint of green smoothie daily gives you 150% of that recommendation.) The researchers said that while 40% of Americans fall below minimum nutrition thresholds, others are likely being harmed by supplements.

To read Part II of this report, click here.