Advertisements proclaim that vitamins provide energy, promote wellness, and prevent disease and that taking more means more energy and better health. Consequently, 33% of all americans take one or more vitamin supplements in multiple and single doses, in natural and synthetic forms, and in amounts 10 or more times higher than recommended. Vitamins do facilitate energy release from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, but they do not provide energy. It is not possible to survive on water and vitamins.The growing interest in vitamin supplements is primarily related to the antioxidant vitamins and folate. The relationship of these vitamins to health promotion and disease prevention, discussed previously, has sparked an unprecedented trend toward supplements. Despite this trend, however, strong definitive conclusions about supplements have not been advanced by the scientific community. The consensus among nutrition experts is that healthy adults who eat a variety of foods do not need them. They also advise that if you don’t think you’re getting enough vitamins in your food, taking a multivitamin pill with nutrients at RDA levels may offer some nutritional insurance, provided it is consumed in moderation and is not used as an excuse to eat a poor diet. The conclusion of the harvard health letter about this issue provides good advice - “While there is no reason to believe that judicious use of vitamin supplements is harmful, people who eat well balanced diets cannot be confident that taking them will be beneficial.”

Vitamin supplements are sometimes needed by people with irregular diets or unusual lifestyles or by people following certain weight reduction regimens or strict vegetarian diets. In addition, infants and pregnant and lactating women may need supplements. When taken as supplements, vitamins should be viewed as medicine and therefore recommended by a physician.

When shopping for supplements, it is easy to be misled by advertising hype and inaccurate labels. According to a 1995 investigation,24 Americans spend an estimated $5 billion annually for vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplements. As much as 35% of this expenditure goes for products with no scientifically proven health value. More than one third of Americans’ investment in vitamins is wasted on pills and powders whose potency has expired or on items diluted by additives that do little more than boost prices. Consequently it is important for consumers to be discriminating in their purchase of supplements.

Natural Versus Synthetic Vitamins

Many people mistakenly believe that vitamins in food are better than vitamins made in the laboratory. A vitamin has the same chemical structure regardless of its source, and the body generally cannot distinguish between natural and synthetic vitamins. The one exception is vitamin E. Natural vitamin E appears to be better absorbed and used by the body than the synthetic version. (If it’s natural, the ingredient list should show dalpha tocopheral. If it shows dlalpha tocopheral or other tocopherals, it may not be natural.)

Foods grown with natural, organic fertilizers also are not more nutritious or do not have more vitamins than food grown with chemical fertilizers. In fact, natural fertilizers cannot be used directly on plants. They must be broken down into the same com pounds found in chemical fertilizers. Vitamins do not come from the soil but are manufactured by genetically controlled processes within the plants themselves. (This is not true for some minerals, such as iron.) Few studies have considered whether organic foods offer better nutrition than crops grown traditionally (with the use of pesticides, herbicides, etc.). Environmental concerns, and not nutritional ones, should be the major motive for buying organic foods.