Tip of the day: Eat healthfully, skip the multivitamin

Thinking you might need a multivitamin? It's probably not necessary if you eat a healthful diet, meaning plenty of fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products, and modest amounts of fish and low-fat meat and poultry. Indeed, getting your nutrients from food rather than pills offers noteworthy advantages. Food contains beneficial fiber as well as phytochemicals that may not only help prevent disease but also interact usefully with one another. And consuming plenty of nutritious foods leaves less room in your diet for unhealthful choices.

Find out if you need to take a multivitamin, earn how to fill your nutritional gaps, and if you're taking a multivitamin or supplement, visit our Natural Medicine Ratings (subscribers only) section to check the effectiveness and interactions.

Comments

[dave]

Trader Joe's store of Germany sells something here in Los Angeles called "Dynamo with Calcium". It's a fruit juices from different fruits and vitamins added to it. It claims it contains 100 percent of Daily value of 12 different vitamins including vitamin D which science says is so important. Can TJ be right?

[Eric]

I think less than 1% of people in this country eat this way, thus supplementation is necessary for optimal health. Unless you are a farmer with a fish pond nearby, this is almost impossible to do with only food.

This is the key to supplements: phytochemicals
One company came up with this decades ago and now everyone is finally seeing the benefits. The basic chemical composition of most vitamins is minimally helpful if removed from the phytochemicals, and the fact that most of them don't have this complex combination is why they are so cheap - and useless. That company was Nutrilite, founded by Dr. Carl Renborg(?) decades ago. I've been using their supplements for many years and urge anyone looking to supplement to do real research. Their site is: http://www.nutrilite.com/

[James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.]

I go back and forth on the multivitamin. No doubt nutritious food is essential. As you know it is difficult to get enough daily vitamin D in foods and dermatologists keep warning of the dangers of the sun, so that's my recent excuse for taking one with 400 IU.
Thanks