CONFUSED ABOUT MULTIVITAMINS?

NO WONDER EVERYBODY’S CONFUSED ABOUT VITAMINS!

I’m sorry, but the recent testing of multivitamins by the CONSUMER REPORTS just doesn’t give us many useful facts on the subject.  It’s just more of the essentially vapid reportage we can expect from mainstream media on food and supplements.  I’m a fan of CONSUMER REPORTS, but they just don’t have the depth of knowledge and understanding to get most health matters right.

When you read a study result, you have to ask whether the questions being answered are worth asking in the first place.  A recent test of 21 multivitamin supplements in CONSUMER REPORTS asked whether the products 1) Contained what the label claimed 2) Contained worrisome levels of contanimants such as mercury, lead or arsenic and 3) Dissolve properly in your body.  Fair enough.  You want any supplement to meet all these criteria.  But is this all we need to know?

IS CHEAPEST BEST? 
The majority and of the 21 products actually passed all these tests with flying colors.  CONSUMERS REPORTS then goes on to explain that Americans spent $4.7 billion on multivitamins in 2008 and that “there’s virtually no evidence the improve the average person’s health.”  By the way, the winning multivitamin in their test was Costco’s Kirkland Signature.  It won because, all other factors being equal, it was the cheapest.

THE PROBLEM WITH ISOLATES
So now we have a cheap manufactured product with modest amounts of a few isolated nutrients, far removed the food forms in which we humans have been ingesting nutrients since the beginning of time.  It’s not surprising that the available research fails to show health benefits from these chemical concoctions.  A few industrial vitamin and mineral isolates packaged in a pill are a poor substitute for real food.  The thousands of companion nutrients required by any single nutrient for full utilization by our cells are missing.  Our cells simply cannot recognize these products as food.      

WHAT CAN WE KNOW?
The CONSUMER REPORTS article evinces ignorance of still another important question: How do we determine the effect of multiple low doses of any nutrient or combination of nutrients over a period of many years.  The likelihood of a funding a study that is large and long enough to answer this question is very low indeed.  So it’s a bit ridiculous to pronounce “there’s virtually no evidence” showing benefit, as though we’ve magically arrived at a place of perfect knowledge with a definitive answer to the multivitamin question.

FOOD FIRST
What’s are the answers to these prickly questions?  There are no perfect answers, but here’s a practical suggestion based on a “food first” argument that everyone on all sides of the multivitamin issue is likely to agree with.  If you’re looking for safe blanket insurance to help correct whatever nutrient defects may be in your diet, take a food-based multivitamin.  These are products designed for increased bioavailability, with individual nutrients in a form as close to food as allowed by each company’s specific manufacturing process.  I can’t guarantee a health benefit from any of them.  Nor can I tell whether one is better than the another.  Nobody can. But the “close to food as possible” approach is probably a lot better than swallowing a bunch of isolated nutrients your body may not know how to handle. 

THREE PRODUCTS
Here are three companies and three products you can look into:  Standard Process (Catalyn + B12/Trace Minerals), Innate Response (One Daily Multi w/out Iron) and New Chapter (Every Woman’s One Daily/Every Man’s One Daily).  The Standard Process products are available only directly from health care professionals’ offices.  The Innate Response product is available from Moss Nutrition (800-851-5444) at a 20% discount.  The New Chapter products are available from vitacost.com, a reputable internet supplement store.  I personally use the Standard Process products, but they do require that you take 5 to 10 small tablets a day.  The others are simple one-a-days.  The 20% discount from Moss will be granted as soon as you mention my name — I do have a financial tie to them.  Any one of these products is fine and probably a great improvement over the usual cheap nutrient isolate multivitamins.