{"id":977,"date":"2009-02-12T03:50:49","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T01:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=977"},"modified":"2015-02-12T21:24:48","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T02:24:48","slug":"time-for-another-rant-multivitamin-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/time-for-another-rant-multivitamin-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Time For Another Rant (Multivitamin Edition)…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sure you’ve seen the news about the latest study on multivitamins<\/a>, and how they don’t prevent cancer or CVD in older women.<\/p>\n

I’m ok with that…<\/p>\n

And no, I don’t intend to stop taking\u00a0my multi, since preventing cancer and\/or CVD isn’t the reason I’m\u00a0taking one in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0Essential\u00a0nutrients are\u00a0one\u00a0among a larger\u00a0range of lifestyle factors that weigh in on\u00a0an individual’s risk of developing certain cancers or cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 Thus, I would have been\u00a0surprised to discover that the simple act of taking a concentrated nutrient pill could somehow, magically overcome other\u00a0negatives. And there are plenty of negatives…I’m in the fitness\/nutrition bidness: I SEE what a lot of people put in their shopping carts and order in restaurants.\u00a0 I SEE what a lot of people do (or don’t do) in the gym.\u00a0 There’s no freakin’ way a simple pill’s gonna work those kinds of miracles.<\/p>\n

I take my multi, to make sure that I have the basics covered…period.\u00a0 Now, don’t get me wrong, I eat a darned good diet.\u00a0 But do I eat in such a way that I get 100% of the RDA of each and every nutrient, each and every day?\u00a0 I tend to doubt it.\u00a0\u00a0I expect\u00a0I miss targets here and there, so, I use a multi to fill in the blanks.\u00a0 I’m quite sure that this results in an excess of certain things (like riboflavin, for example), but there’s no harm in that.\u00a0 I’d just as soon take extra of some (readily excretable) things than not enough of others.<\/p>\n

So, as far as I’m concerned, this is really “un-news.”\u00a0 I find the media circus annoying, but that’s par for the course…it’s the “news du jour” at the moment.\u00a0 C’est la vie.<\/p>\n

What I don’t get, however, is\u00a0how\u00a0certain\u00a0professional\u00a0scolds\u00a0are using this study to\u00a0bash the supp industry and screech\u00a0for increased regulation.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it starts at the\u00a0top, with\u00a0lead author, Dr. Marian Neuhouser:<\/p>\n

Neuhouser also criticizes the deregulation of the supplement industry that occurred in the US in the early 1990s with the introduction of the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act. “The FDA has a small amount of jurisdiction, but it’s an unfunded mandate and their meager budget means they don’t really have any policing power over this,” she noted. <\/em><\/p>\n

“We have entire aisles in our grocery stores, with all kinds of vitamins, minerals, and so forth. Some are generic or store brand and so not that expensive, but some are extremely expensive. I hate to have consumers spending money on something that may not help them at all, when they could probably better spend it on healthy foods,” she concluded.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Frankly, talk like that scares the hell out of\u00a0me…I’m proud of my (former) profession as a researcher, and I’d like to think high-ranking scientists like Dr. Neuhouser can reason better than this!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Is she\u00a0saying that the makers of multivitamin supplements\u00a0claim their products will prevent cancer or heart disease?\u00a0 I see no such claims on the label of my multi, and –\u00a0contrary to her mewling about how underfunded the FDA is, the one thing they’re really pretty good at, is sending out warning letters regarding unsubstantiated health\/nutrition claims (example here<\/a>).\u00a0 Is she saying that the FDA should be\u00a0regulating what manufacturers charge for their products?\u00a0 I hate to tell the good doctor this, but that’s not the way the free market works…there are a whole slew of overpriced, non-supplement products on the store shelves, too – why single out vitamins?\u00a0 Is she saying she believes that people\u00a0take multivitamins instead of buying healthy foods?\u00a0 I beg to differ.\u00a0 According to\u00a0relatively recent (2005)\u00a0survey<\/a>:<\/p>\n

People reporting both a multivitamin\/multimineral and a single supplement (Multi Plus category) and any nonvitamin\/nonmineral products (Herbals category) were more likely to be consuming more vegetables and higher-quality fruits and vegetables than those not taking any dietary supplements (Nonusers category).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr. Neuhouser would have a better argument if she was claiming that these folks didn’t need to be taking a multi at all, but the above makes it obvious that it’s not an “either\/or” proposition – whatever other faults the supp industry has (and I spend my days documenting these) consumers are NOT being\u00a0beguiled into\u00a0thinking it’s ok to eat Ding Dongs instead of broccoli, as long as they’re taking\u00a0a One-A-Day.<\/p>\n

On the basis of her quoted remarks, it’s as if she thinks multivitamin products should be “policed” out of existence…which is bizarro-world\u00a0thinking at best.\u00a0 If we’re going to start regulating what food\/nutritional products should be allowed on store shelves, based on what they do\/don’t do to prevent disease, we’d be better off starting with those Ding Dongs…and Cokes, and Doritos, and…well, you get the picture.<\/p>\n

Personally, I’d just as soon see the FDA go after the very\u00a0real danger of contaminated food<\/a> vs. multivitamin supplements, which – however useless they may be against cancer and CVD –\u00a0are\u00a0hazardous only in the imaginations of people like Dr.\u00a0Neuhouser.\u00a0 She needs to get her priorities straight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m sure you’ve seen the news about the latest study on multivitamins, and how they don’t prevent cancer or CVD in older women. I’m ok with that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,17,19,28],"tags":[514,1067,1135],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8307,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions\/8307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}