My pal in dental school recently said that supplemental multivitamins were mostly useless from his studies, and that school of thought has steadily gained traction in the media as of late. Slate has published a pretty insightful article on the debate, including some revered study publications concluding the multivitamins ineffectiveness:
Half of all American adults take some sort of nutritional supplement. But research on a wide variety of patient populations and medical conditions has failed to find much evidence that multivitamins, the most commonly used of the lot, prevent major chronic diseases in healthy people. The most recent knock came this spring, when a study of more than 160,000 post-menopausal women, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that the all-in-one pills did not prevent cancer, heart attacks, or strokes and did not reduce overall mortality.
Of course there’s two sides to every debate, but it would be a sad story to deprive future generations of those morning Flintstones vitamins.