Growing up, my parents would hand me a multivitamin each night. It was usually the ones that looked like a gummy bear, so I always considered it be candy and took it willingly. However, their reason for giving me this supplement was not as a mere treat but more so based on what many consumers falsely believe: Multivitamins can improve your overall health.
Image showing a few types of multivitamins.
(Via Flickr)
Multivitamins are advertised to be beneficial for your body, marketed as a dietary supplement with vitamins and other nutritional components. The billions that the multivitamin industry has earned is proof of how many people believe that these supplements can aid in meeting their needs. However, there is now increasing evidence to prove otherwise that these supplements are considered to be inadequate. In the video by Beadledom911 posted below, multivitamins are concluded to have no impact on our overall health.
Many consumers take these supplements in the hopes of improving their health or filling in the nutritional gaps they may have from their daily diet. However, researchers have urged consumers to stop consuming these pills at all since there is less evidence to prove their benefits and more so that demonstrate how ineffective supplements truly are. As Susan Taylor Mayne suggests, the most effective way to receive vitamins is through your diet and not these supplements. Consuming vitamins in a supplement form is less beneficial than eating natural foods itself since they preserve the nutrients more so than pills.
The multivitamin industry is strategic in how they approach their consumers and feed them false information about the benefits of their products. In fact, their strategies have been proven to be so effective that as much as $1.3 to $1.7 billion are spent annually on supplements alone in the United States. These companies appeal to a general population that, for the most part, has a balanced diet. Thus, the benefits they claim of improving your overall health are insignificant for these consumers.
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An exaggeration of how some marketers advertise their supplement products.
(Via Wikimedia)
Ironically, those that consume vitamin supplements are the ones who least need them. Consumers mainly purchase multivitamins for the desire to improve their overall health, not to meet a specific need. But if vitamins are so beneficial for us, then wouldn’t more of them be better? Wrong. As the video posted above suggests, there are no significant health improvements from multivitamin intake; therefore, it has no meaningful effect on treating, preventing, or improving your overall health.
So, unless you’re trying to meet a specific need, avoid the “gummy bears” because it would be more beneficial for you to consume the real candy than the one in the supplement aisle.
Harsheen Chawla
