Hard to Digest
Ah, sweet comeuppance!
I’ll tell you the truth, at first I was livid when I read an article titled “5 Vitamin Truths and Lies” in the April 2010 issue of Reader’s Digest. In it, author Christie Aschwanden exposes the “myth” of the value of multivitamins – comparing belief in that myth to belief in the tooth fairy.
So is this just another dietary supplement slam from the mainstream media?
Not quite.
What makes Aschwanden’s article so galling is the fact that Reader’s Digest is read by 40 million people in more than 70 countries. It’s translated into 21 languages, and it’s the largest paid circulation magazine in the world.
In other words, millions will read this laughable junk and many will actually buy it.
Or that’s what I thought at first.
After reading the entire article online (multivitamin use is just one of the dietary supplement myths “shattered” by Aschwanden–she also dreams up a few other half-baked myths), I took a look at the comments left by readers. Some agree with the article, but the overwhelming majority sees right through Aschwanden’s lame arguments against multi use.
That’s the sweet comeuppance. The shame is that subscribers who receive RD in the mail may never see the excellent rebuttals from their fellow readers. (You can read them for yourself at rd.com.)
Of course, I’m not going to pass up a chance to take my own shots at this absurd supplement takedown. So let’s look at the extremely low nutritional value in Aschwanden’s two key arguments against multi use.
ARGUMENT ONE: “Recent research suggests that a daily multi is a waste of money for most people.”
In this “recent research,” Marian Neuhouser, Ph.D., analyzed data from the Women’s Health Initiative study and concluded that multivitamin users don’t have reduced rates of cancer, heart disease, and stroke compared to nonusers.
But do you know anyone who thinks of multivitamins as anti-cancer pills or anti-heart disease pills?
A multivitamin isn’t a magic pill. It’s a tool–just one of many tools we use to maintain good health. And that good health we strive for includes so much more than prevention of cancer, heart disease, and stroke. We’re just as concerned about cognitive health, vision health, bone health, digestive health, and prevention of type 2 diabetes, to name just a few health issues that have been shown to be supported by multivitamin use.
Aschwanden finishes up this argument with a quote from Dr. Neuhouser who notes that plants contain hundreds of compounds: “If you just take a multivitamin, you’re missing lots of compounds that may be providing benefits.”
If you “just take a multivitamin”? How clueless is that? Do you know ANYONE who takes a multivitamin to replace food? It’s ridiculous! As if we multivitamin users believe that eating fruits and vegetables is pointless because we take our daily pill.
But that’s nothing. THIS is where it gets really funny…
ARGUMENT TWO: Aschwanden writes: “But these days, you’re extremely unlikely to be seriously deficient if you eat an average American diet, if only because many packaged foods are vitamin-enriched.”
Seriously. She actually wrote that.
She’s got one thing right: There are mountains of packaged crap…er, I mean FOODS in the average American diet. But she doesn’t seem to understand that packaged foods are enriched with the very same ingredients that go into multivitamins.
The obvious difference is that you can take steps to ensure you’re getting high quality ingredients when you choose a reputable multi. You’ll also know how much of each nutrient you’re getting. Most foods “enriched”with vitamins contain only trace amounts. HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., describes it like this: “Infinitesimal ‘fairy dust’ amounts to impress a gullible consumer.”
To make matters worse, packaged foods sometimes contain vitamins in forms that aren’t absorbable or usable for your body. In one notable example, milk was enriched with D2 instead of D3 for decades..
Douglas MacKay, a VP at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, made another great point about Aschwanden’s article. He told NutraIngredients-USA that the article misleads millions of consumers who need supplements for a variety of specific reasons.
For instance, vegetarians can only get B-12 through supplements. Older people and smokers need to use supplements to make up for poor vitamin and mineral absorption. People with health challenges such as anemia or chronic inflammation can address their conditions with supplements.
Now…if only I could forward this e-mail to several million Reader’s Digest subscribers.
To Your Good Health,
Jenny Thompson
Sources:
“5 Vitamin Truths and Lies” Christie Aschwanden, Reader’s Digest, April 2010, rd.com
“Readers Digest Vitamins Article Misleads Millions of Americans: CRN” Mike Stones, NutraIngredients-USA, 3/15/10, nutraingredients-usa.com
