I have always associated the word “vitamins” with fruit, vegetables, and the sun. Only after moving to the US did I discover that, for many people, vitamins are colorful pills that are somehow preferable to an apple or a tomato. Of course, these pills are not simply useless. They can also be dangerous:
Multivitamins and some dietary supplements, used regularly by an estimated 234 million U.S. adults, may do more harm than good, according to a study that tied their use to higher death rates among older women. The use of multivitamins was associated with a 2.4 per cent increased risk of death, according to the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. . .
While people typically use supplements in the hope of maintaining or improving health, the study adds to evidence that some vitamins and supplements may be harmful, said Goran Bjelakovic, a doctor at the University of Nis in Serbia, and Cristian Gluud, a doctor at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, in an accompanying editorial. The research also raises a concern that long-term use of supplements may not be safe, the researchers said.
“We see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements,” wrote the authors, led by Jaakko Mursu, a nutritionist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio.
In spite of this, half of American adults take these vitamin pills. Most of the pill-takers are the same people who wouldn’t eat delicious fresh broccoli if you paid them to do it.
I have a feeling that for many vitamin addicts some sort of a prestige attaches to vitamin pill taking. You see something akin to self-righteousness in a person who is absolutely convinced s/he is being health-conscious by gulping down yet another set of pills.
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