Vitamyths indeed

I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read Emily Anthes' latest article for Slate: The Vita Myth: Do supplements really do any good? Anthes pulls together all the revealing studies from last year - finding only a few matters in which vitamin use is truly wise, points out the strong psychological hold the industry has over us, the power of placebo, and debunks the antioxidant promises. Her bottom line: We should treat vitamins like prescription medicine rather than health candy.

More bad news about vitamins...

Tara Parker-Pope writes about all the recent bad news about vitamins in her NY Times Well blog. From her post:

Everyone needs vitamins, which are critical for the body. But for most people, the micronutrients we get from foods usually are adequate to prevent vitamin deficiency, which is rare in the United States. That said, some extra vitamins have proven benefits, such as vitamin B12 supplements for the elderly and folic acid for women of child-bearing age. And calcium and vitamin D in women over 65 appear to protect bone health.

A Johns Hopkins School of Medicine review of 19 vitamin E clinical trials of more than 135,000 people showed high doses of vitamin E (greater than 400 IUs) increased a person’s risk for dying during the study period by 4 percent. Taking vitamin E with other vitamins and minerals resulted in a 6 percent higher risk of dying. A later study of daily vitamin E showed vitamin E takers had a 13 percent higher risk for heart failure.

On the bright side, while Vitamin C has no overall benefit for cold prevention, it has been linked with a 50% reduction in colds among marathon runners, skiers, soldiers, and people who are exposed to significant physical stress and cold temperatures, according to the study Parker-Pope discusses. Be careful though - because Vitamin C may interfere with Cancer treatment.

No proof of vitamin supplements benefits

The findings of a recent, long-term, large-scale study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show that regular supplements of vitamins C, D and E do not reduce the occurrence of heart attacks, stroke, or breast cancer. Once again, Michael Pollan was right (think myths of nutritionism).

Read a summary of the findings in this LA Times article recently printed in The Sun.

There is something fishy about this... or not fishy...

Orange juice laced with anchovies to give you a beneficial dose of Omega-3s and vitamin C? Fat burning waffles? Digestion regulating ketchup? Powdered beets, carrots and bananas in peanut butter? Ugh. Nothing says health like getting nutraceuticals - that are hardly proven beneficial after separation from the healthy whole FOOD - by way of processed concoctions like these.

NY Times reporter Julia Moskin weighs in on new "added value" health claims being made by uber-processors Tropicana (owned by PepsiCo), General Mills, Kraft and Dannon in her article Super Food or Monster From the Deep? From the article:

A new brand of peanut butter, Zap, is imperceptibly fortified with powdered beets, carrots and bananas. NutritiousChocolate, a new product from Gary Null, a health-food marketer, includes the usual ingredients of chocolate: cocoa butter, cocoa beans, cane sugar, vanilla. Oh, and broccoli, cranberries, nectarines, parsley, pomegranates, watermelons, kale and more — a total of 30 additional plants, all in powdered form. But whether the nutritional benefits of the original foods survive in additive form is still to be determined. "Whether a tomato is good for you, that’s one thing,” Dr. Kessler said. “Whether the lycopene in a tomato is good for you, that’s another. And then whether synthetic lycopene and microencapsulated lycopene are also good for you, that’s yet another thing.” ... Eating the right nutrients is a complicated question, one that nutritionists say could most easily be solved by eating a wide range of basic foods. Dr. Lichtenstein of Tufts says that the recent setbacks and surprises in nutrition research have made her rethink the whole model of adding nutrients to the diet, despite the effectiveness of vitamin fortification. Maybe the true benefit of eating a lot of fish is that you are actually eating less of something else, like steak,” she said. “Maybe a subtraction model is the key. We have a long way to go to find out.”
(fun photo from NY Times, by Lars Klove)

Besides pointing out the obviously healthier choice, to opt for the whole food, Moskin draws a clear line between the triumph of fortified foods like Vitamin-B-enriched flour and Vitamin-D-enriched milk that were based in rigorous research and studies, and the carefully designed marketing campaigns whose claims often slip through the cracks and onto the shelves. She examines the economical reasoning behind adding value and leads the reader to a Pollan-esque conclusion: that there is a whole lot more to health and nutrition than these isolated nutraceuticals.

Again: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. -MP

You all know how I feel about "nutritionism," right? And isolated-vitamin pushers? In case you don't, I consider most vitamin-of-the-month club news to be clever marketing and cringe when I share a meal with someone who a) notices that I haven't ordered a dish with meat and comments/questions me about it, then b) tells me about the importance of protein and iron with no study to source and c) then offers their expert advice on which vitamin/supplement I should be taking.

Anywho... Baltimore Sun reporter Kelly Brewington wrote an article last week about the $9.7 billion dollar vitamin/supplement industry in the U.S. ($ total from 2007) and what advice, if any, may be worthwhile. To give you a few highlights:

- There isn't enough evidence against the practice to tell people to stop taking vitamins but there also isn't really enough to tell people to start taking them.
- Many experts agree about the benefits of Iron for women at childbearing age and calcium and vitamin D for post-menopausal women.
- A lot of the "evidence" can be biased because the vitamin-takers are already leading a healthier lifestyle.
- The bottom line however, is that eating whole, healthy, local and seasonal foods and exercising will serve your body better than any vitamin/mineral supplement.

Check out the article at: www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-to.hs.vitamins08sep08,0,4530283.story

*Note: This post of course reminds me of a devastating fact about one in seven children in Africa either going or being born blind from a Vitamin A deficiency (that I will have to look up to report and source properly). I mention this because I'd like to point out that I understand the devastating consequences of a limited diet in certain parts of the world and in no way intend to diminish the importance of a balanced diet. What I am blogging about, and what Kelly Brewington is reporting about, is the supplement industry targeting the health-conscious market in America: a supposedly undernourished yet clearly over-fed population.