If You Care About Your Health, This Is For You! : Vitamin Pills Are A Waste Of Money, Experts warn…..The Times

Since experts says taking vitamins is a waste of money, please what quantity of fruit and vegetable is needed to get the required vitamins needed for the body? Read the article after the cut...

Vitamin supplements are almost always a waste of money with no health benefits, a group of experts has said after analysing some of the world’s most comprehensive research involving half a million people.

 

Declaring “case closed” on the vitamin and mineral pills taken by one in three Britons, academics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Warwick said the accumulation of evidence suggests that “supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults . . . has no clear benefit and might even be harmful”.

 

One of the scientists also suggested that companies selling the supplements — worth more than £650 million annually in Britain — were creating false health anxieties in order to offer a cure that was not required.

 

The academics’ statement coincided with the release of three research papers. One was an analysis of 24 previous trials involving 450,000 people, which found no beneficial effect on mortality from taking vitamins. The second looked at 6,000 elderly men and assessed the effect of supplements on cognitive decline. It found no improvement after 12 years. The third followed 1,700 men and women with heart problems for an average of just under five years, and saw no advantage in those who had been given supplements.

 

Taken together, the scientists said that the evidence was clear. Writing in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, they said that the use of most supplements was not justified and they should be avoided. “These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough,” they wrote. Past research also implies that some supplements, in particular Beta-carotene and vitamin E, could be harmful. Beta-carotene has been linked to lung cancer.

 

About a third of British adults take some form of nutritional supplement, with the most popular being multivitamins, followed by vitamin C. Although vitamins are vital for the proper functioning of the body, scientists believe that a Western diet is sufficient, except in extreme cases.

 

“There are some that advocate we have many nutritional deficiencies in our diet,” Edgar Miller, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, Maryland, said.“The truth is though we are in general overfed, our diet is completely adequate.”

 

While in the past diseases such as scurvy and rickets might have been prevalent, he added, “today, we’re not generally shipwrecked sailors”.

 

“These companies are marketing products to us based on perceptions of deficiencies. They make us think our diet is unhealthy, and that they can help us make up for these deficiencies and stop chronic illnesses.

 

“The group that needs these is very small. It’s not the general population. I went into my mother in law’s bathroom cabinet and it was full of vitamins — she is 80 years old,” he added.

 

“There’s something for everything: preventing joint pains, stopping heart disease. If you’re going to spend your money on something every month, is this really the best option?”

 

The NHS advises women to take folic acid when they are trying to conceive. The elderly and children under five could benefit from vitamin D, but it considers most other supplements to be unnecessary.

In a recent research document about the supplements market, the NHS said: “If you fall outside of these groups and buy vitamin pills then the chances are that you will be spending your money on surplus amounts of vitamins you’ve already gained through your diet.”

 

In Britain vitamin companies have been criticised for making claims that could not be supported by evidence. Vitabiotics, the biggest vitamins company in Britain, was ordered to remove an advertisement in 2011 claiming to offer “advanced nutrients for the brain”.

 

The Health Food Manufacturers’ Association, which represents Vitabiotics and companies such as Holland and Barrett, said yesterday: “Dietary survey data in the UK, and more widely in Europe, suggest that there are pockets of low vitamin intake both in the UK and in other European countries. In the UK diet the most vulnerable vitamins are A, B2, D and folate.

 

“For most, the best solution is to eat as healthy a diet as possible, combined with other health-related lifestyle changes. Daily vitamin supplements also provide important nutritional insurance for millions of users (17 million adults in Britain take food supplements at least four times a week) looking to safeguard their nutritional intake.”