Everyone tells us to get our greens and top up on our veggies. But, truth be told, most of us are popping a multivitamin for protection from the rough patches. It takes a very close relationship with your kitchen to get the 7 servings a day that Canada’s Food Guide recommends. For those of us with a little around the middle, that recommendation should balance heavily in favor of vegetables and not those tasty fruits.
Our reliance on today’s “mother’s little helper” has come under fire from two massive studies. The first group, commissioned by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, reviewed 63 gold standard research trials on multivitamins. It concluded that multis did nothing to prevent heart disease or cataracts in most populations and were only potentially effective in preventing cancer in people with suboptimal nutrition. The second group followed over 160,000 postmenopausal women from the Women’s Health Initiative clinical trials for 8 years. The researchers’ conclusion: “Multivitamins failed to prevent cancer, heart disease, and all causes of death for all women. Whether the women were healthy eaters or ate very few fruits and vegetables, the results were the same,” says the lead author, Marian Neuhouser, PhD.
So where did conventional wisdom let us down? Earlier studies were following some of the healthiest people on the planet – multivitamin takers. Vitamin takers tend to be leaner, more affluent, and more educated. They drink and smoke less; they exercise and go to the doctor more. In other words, they’re healthy despite their use of multis.
The evidence for the health benefits of vitamins and minerals leads us back to all those darn vegetables. There is voluminous clinical evidence in favor of the protective health benefits of those greens (and yellows, reds, purples, browns, you get it). As one of many, a meta-analysis of 12 studies found that consuming more than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day was associated with a 17% reduced risk of coronary heart disease in comparison to eating fewer than 3 servings a day.
But let’s face it – most of us still are not going to be putting the hours in the kitchen and facing the pained looks from our families. If a multivitamin works for your lifestyle, just be aware of some of the myths in an article on Eating Well’s blog. The information is U.S.-based and identifies things to watch for when choosing a multi:
- there’s no legal definition for “multivitamin”, so you need to know what nutritional profile you need
- up to 1ne-third of the time the labels of products without a USP seal don’t match the contents because they are not monitored by federal agencies
- Adding other elements like phytochemicals are purely for health marketing claims and bumping up the price
- supplement makers don’t have to say how clinically rigorous their scientific claims are
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In Canada, The Natural Health Products Directorate (NHPD) of Health Canada developed regulations in 2004 to oversee natural health products that are safe, effective in delivering the health benefits claimed and of high quality. They set out requirements for the manufacture, packaging, labeling and importation for sale in Canada. In 2016 Health Canada changed the name of the directorate to Natural and Non-Prescription Health Products Directorate to reflect a change of focus. The Directorate will classify many vitamin, homeopathic remedies, cosmetics and minerals as “low risk”. They will not be licensed and regulated for health claims, but also will not be able to make health claims, either. Products that have a bigger clinical impact will be more tightly regulated. To follow up on health claims, the link to the database is here: Licensed Natural Health Products Database