Several scientific studies have emerged revealing that taking vitamins has no measurable effect on your health. Some of the research even suggests vitamins might even be doing more harm than good.
In 2014, an editorial piece published in the Annals of Medicine said, “The message is simple: Most supplements do not prevent chronic disease or death, their use is not justified, and they should be avoided. This message is especially true for the general population with no clear evidence of micro-nutrient deficiency, who represent the vast majority of users in the United States and in other countries.”
That conclusion was based on three major studies into the long-term effect of vitamins on health and an investigation into the actual contents of most vitamin products on the market.
You can be sure that we would have known about this a long time ago if the vitamin and supplement industry didn’t have a powerful influence over lawmakers, research organizations, and wield enormous advertisement powers. Each year, the vitamin and supplement industry takes in more than $12 billion in multivitamin sales and more than $30 billion for supplement sales.
Some people opposed the studies, saying that many poor Americans do not get enough nutrition from the foods they eat. It’s a strange claim to use as the basis for an argument pushing the consumption of vitamins that provably do little to no good. If the diets of people living in poverty do not contain sufficient nutrients, then adding a supplement that has no nutritional value would be a pretty crummy solution. What’s more, if any vitamins do offer positive health benefits, it is the most expensive ones- not the common brands that are offered on supermarket shelves. If the poor cannot afford nutritious food- how can they afford the most expensive vitamins?
It’s more or less common knowledge, that the best place to get your vitamins and nutrients is by eating a healthy diet full of high-quality fruits, vegetables, and proteins. Certainly, some specialty vitamins do offer good ingredients- but the only reason you would benefit from these is if you are missing vital nutrients in your diet. If you cannot afford good food, how can you afford the pricey specialty vitamins that might actually do you some good?
If there is a good answer to this question it is convenience. A high-quality multivitamin might consolidate the nutrients you would get by eating a number of healthy foods. But if you have the option to have a healthy diet, do you really want to take a shortcut that is almost certainly inferior to real food?
No vitamin, however high in quality, can match the benefits of good healthy food. The difference, at best is the difference between running on a treadmill for exercise and running on a hiking trail. Not only are you paying for the privilege of using the machine- but you’re missing out on fresh air and natural scenery. Even the best vitamins are a second-class substitute.
But there is one more question left unanswered. Where do vitamins and supplements get their nutrients from? Well, the fact is that the best nutritional supplements take their vitamins from food products. That’s right. They destroy good healthy food and sell it back to you in the form of a dry, bitter pill.
In the worst cases, vitamin manufacturers synthesize fake vitamin molecules in a laboratory. We have been told for years that artificial vitamins are every bit as good as real food but this is not the case. Often times these phony micro-nutrients are only partially identical to a real nutrient and in many cases, these fake nutrients have been linked to cancer.
Well well, how the mighty have fallen.
But it gets worse. We mentioned it in an article on the truth about salt. Good, wholesome natural salt is a vital nutrient that does not hurt your heart or make you fat at all. The real villain is table salt. Table salt is the result of the process of “salt enrichment”- a bitterly cynical twisting of the language which actually means stripping salt of the vital minerals it contains. They sell the stripped and broken minerals to vitamin manufacturers, and they sell the ruined salt back you as table salt.
Table salt is poison. Next time you have the chance, compare sea salt to table salt. Sea salt is fluffy, crumbly, and wholesome. Table salt is dry and ruined like sand– like the health of those who fall for these common health scams.
~ Health Scams Exposed
