Do multivitamins work? Are multivitamins just a waste of money? This is an ongoing question, and the answers seem to change with the ebb and flow of supplement and wellness marketing trends. I have broken down some of the basic questions around multivitamins that I receive, and provided information to help make more informed decisions when choosing whether or not to take them.
Are Multivitamins Necessary?
It depends on who you ask. The nutritional supplement industry, with it’s roughly $60-billion in US sales alone, will respond with a resounding “yes!” However, if you start asking the experts, you might find a different answer. More and more doctors are acknowledging that extracting (a.k.a. isolating) a single nutrient or vitamin and putting it into a pill may not be the best way to deliver the nutrition to our bodies. “We believe that the case is closed — supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful,” concluded the authors of an editorial summarizing the new research papers, published Dec. 16, 2013 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough.” They went on to urge consumers to not “waste” their money on multivitamins. Further research on this subject revealed to me many doctors and experts making similar statements.
Do We Actually Digest & Absorb Multivitamins?
Well, not exactly. I have heard claim after claim, made mostly by vitamin sales reps and independent distributors, about the “high absorption rate” of various products. The fact is, there is no true way to measure the absorption “rate” of a vitamin product. Many suggest that taking vitamins with food increases absorption. But if you don’t know which vitamins are water soluble, and which ones are fat soluble, how are you really going to know which vitamins to take with which foods? Also, many vitamin pills contain far more than the recommended daily allowance of whatever vitamin they are delivering. Our bodies have a natural regulating mechanism, meaning no matter how much vitamin C you ingest, your body is only going to use what it needs. The rest gets discarded, or worse yet, left to bog down your natural process of elimination, which eventually leads to inflammation. In a sense, you could be literally harming yourself or “flushing your money down the toilet.” On the other hand, if you were to eat a variety of whole, mostly plant based foods, your body would have all it needs of one vitamin, but would also be able to use all the other bioavailable vitamins and other nutrients in the whole food that it needs to achieve perfect health and balance.
So How Do I Know I Am Getting My Vitamins?
Here is a concept: How about eating real food? In his 2013 NY bestseller Whole, Dr. Colin Campbell, (author of another best seller The China Study), explains the work of renowned researcher Dr. Rui Lai Liu late last century. Dr Liu wanted to compare vitamin C from a fresh apple, to the isolated vitamin C in a pill. What he discovered was that half a cup of fresh apples had an antioxidant, vitamin C-like activity equivalent to 1,500 milligrams of vitamin C (about three times the amount in a typical vitamin C supplement). However, when they chemically analyzed that half-cup of apples, they found only 5.7 milligrams of vitamin C. Meaning, the vitamin C-like activity in half a cup of whole apple was 263 times as potent as the same amount of the isolated chemical. In other words, the specific chemical we refer to as vitamin C accounts for less than 1 percent of the vitamin C-like activity in a fresh apple. The other 99-plus percent of this activity is due to other vitamin C-like chemicals in the apple. This suggests that vitamin C can be much more effective in the context of the whole apple than it is when consumed in an isolated (vitamin pill) form. It makes sense to me that nature would have created a perfect way for you to get more than enough of the vitamins you need from a delicious variety of fruits and vegetables, hence the popular saying, “just eat all the colors of the rainbow.”
Can You Really Get All Your Vitamins in Whole Foods?
It depends on your diet. If you are a carnivore you can get all your vitamins from whole foods, but you need to make sure you eat plenty of colorful vegetables and fruit as well. If you are vegan, you can get all your vitamins from whole foods, with two exceptions. Vitamin B12 and D are the only two vitamins not naturally synthesized in plant foods. Our bodies make vitamin D from healthy, moderate exposure to sun light. Vitamin B12 comes from bacteria that we would have access to if we didn’t habitually wash it from our fruits and vegetables. Obviously, we aren’t going to stop washing our food just so we can get vitamin B12. Since animals don’t wash their food like humans, they naturally ingest and make vitamin B12 available to us. Many vegans are aware that they may need to supplement their vitamin B12.
So… Do Multivitamins work?
We can do ourselves a huge favor and probably save a lot of money, by learning more about the true anatomy of a vitamin, how our bodies absorb it, and where we might find it in our regular diet, before we go running to the super sized bottle of multivitamins at the store. In the very least, if you are convinced that your busy lifestyle and lack of nutrition knowledge dictates that you supplement, it makes the most sense to me to turn to products that deliver the vitamins you are looking for in a whole food supplement, like organic, live, raw, whole greens, super-fruits, and protein from peas, brown rice, hemp and other plants. Bee pollen is another whole food, available in a supplement, that delivers all the nutrients known to sustain life. I know those conventional multivitamins at the market are conveniently tempting, but why not do some exploring and invest a little time in some research before you make your next vitamin purchase? Teach yourself how you can acquire the same variety of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients from a more whole, minimally processed source.
