Multivitamins and Supplements a Waste of Money for Most People
With a few exceptions, they don’t improve health, research finds
Americans spend some $50 billion a year on vitamins and dietary supplements. Most of that money would be better spent on fruits and vegetables, stress-reducing activities or just about anything else deemed good for you.
Yet half of adults lean on dubious pills to supplement their arguably unhealthy diets, sometimes based on little more than a hunch, a TV ad or advice from a friend. Jeffrey Linder, MD, chief of general internal medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, says patients frequently ask what supplements they should take.
“They’re wasting money and focus thinking there has to be a magic set of pills that will keep them healthy when we should all be following the evidence-based practices of eating healthy and exercising,” Linder says.
In a June 21 editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Linder and colleagues echo the latest recommendations from the United States Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts that reviewed 84 studies and found “insufficient evidence” that supplements or multivitamins prevent cardiovascular disease or cancer in healthy, non-pregnant adults.
