
Older Americans Are ‘Hooked’ on Vitamins - HillaryBriss
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/well/older-americans-vitamins-dietary-supplements.html
======
ipunchghosts
The truth that I have seen is that many Americans suffer from some type of
ailment that traditional medicine offers no elucidation of the cause. It could
be diet, lack of exercise, mental health but there is not explicit test to
say, "yes, you have ailment X because of Y."

So what is one to do? IMHO, the best one can do is to persevere and try to
survive the best they can. One way of doing that (and I think a very
productive way) is to be a scientist of your body and try different things.
For some exercise works, for some vitamins, for others a certain type of diet.

I will not judge another for trying to take care of themselves as best they
can. However, I will judge against how scientific they are about doing so to a
degree only to critique their methods in hopes they can reach a state of
reasonable comfort if they havent already obtained it.

Spend an afternoon reading examine.com. Follow the studies. Read conflicting
studies. Read about placebo. You will see that these supplements do help a
significant portion of the populate for condition X. Not everyone though and
likely because conditions X is really a superset of conditions X0, X1, ... XN.
Until we can elucidate condition X into its true subcomponents, I think
Americans will continue to seek their supplements.

~~~
AstralStorm
The whole problem with being your own scientist and blind testing things is
the potentially long transitions to deficiency. And then there is the matter
of spotting problems. Feel like filling in a questionnaire 4 times a day? (A
full dietary and extra of "feel" plus any ailments. Do extended bloodwork
every some time.)

Then knowing how to apply statistics properly?

This is not viable for most people even with modern tools...

On the other hand it is a decent way to lose weight by pervasive tracking
according to a few studies.

~~~
ipunchghosts
> Feel like filling in a questionnaire 4 times a day?

I'm currently working on a paper showing you can track 2 things every day
(total of 3 measurements) and make quite an improvement for a common health
condition.

> Then knowing how to apply statistics properly?

Yes and no. The ultimate gauge is how the person feels. If its placebo then so
what. If they can afford it, who am I to say its wrong.

Also, many intelligent people are involved in the supplement movement and
beginning to organize well and document. Applying an ANOVA isn't that
difficult to do. Any large university will also have a statistical consulting
center which you can visit to have them review your "tests" and explain a good
way to do the stats (I've done this).

> On the other hand it is a decent way to lose weight by pervasive tracking
> according to a few studies.

Yes, you are correct.

~~~
pdpi
> The ultimate gauge is how the person feels.

By that metric, psychics saying they can talk to your loved ones can be
morally justifiable.

~~~
sewercake
I think you're understating people's ability to listen to their own body, and
using an ungenerous definition of 'feeling'.

Listening to your body is a skill that can be developed over time. Several
years ago, I did not pay attention to, or was not aware of, any relation
between what I ate, and how my body felt afterwards, what things looked like
on the other end, etcetera. After starting to work out and taking my health
seriously, I spent more time tracking things like 'how does food X agree with
my stomach? How does it affect my energy levels when I have sugar in the
morning?', and learned a lot. There are foods now I'm very hesitant to touch,
that I would have eaten without a second thought several years ago, because I
now know they affect me personally in undesirable ways.

This is not to say that one should eschew the scientific literature, or their
doctor's advice. You should just take both into account.

------
misja111
I see this as another symptom of USA consumerism. Your feel a little stressed?
Take this tranquilizer! You feel tired? Take these vitamins!

As a consumer the idea that you can let your problems go away by just swalling
a couple of pills is tempting. And the doctor and the farmaceutical company
are making some money on it as well.

The reality is that staying healthy and vital at an older age takes discipline
and effort: you need to eat and drink moderately, keep a balanced diet,
exercise regularly and get enough sleep. But that's a tough message to sell
and nobody is making money on it.

~~~
Dylan16807
"Balanced diet" is just a way of hiding the difficulty. How many dozens of
ways does a diet have to balance, and how much leeway do you have on each one?
Nobody really knows. A supposedly-balanced diet could still be lacking in
vitamin D or iodine or...

If you can solve some of those factors with a pill, why not? Supplementation
is not a cure-all but it can help in a lot of cases.

Note that I'm talking about small doses here, not taking tons and tons of
arbitrary substances.

~~~
pizza234
For most of the people with "dieting" problems, stop eating any junk food is a
good enough "balanced" diet.

The attitude of "taking the pill" is very detrimental, because it typically
mistakes solving the symptoms with solving the cause.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> For most of the people with "dieting" problems, stop eating any junk food is
> a good enough "balanced" diet.

That - naively - assumes that people know what / how to eat and cook when you
take away junk food. I also gathered there's huge areas and neighbourhoods
without access to a normal grocery store - you know, places where they sell
vegetables and such.

~~~
secstate
And your comment - cynically - assumes that no one knows how to cook anything.
A friend of mine who works in a VA hospital sends every patient home with a
cheat sheet on how to cook vegetables to make them delicious and has seen
fantastic uptake, especially when the card comes with an explanation of how
much better your life can be if you'd stop eating refined sugars and pre-
packaged foods.

~~~
sp332
I think you're making Cthulhu_'s point. People need external guidance to know
how to eat well. It's not an innate skill.

------
snikeris
Ideally I would periodically track my diet for a few weeks and only supplement
for deficiencies, but I've found that when I track what I'm eating, I eat
differently.

So instead I take half a multivitamin to ensure I'm not totally deficient in
anything. Reasoning:

> On this point, let me emphasize the logical corollary which I've spelled out
> repeatedly but that people keep missing: unless your diet is composed
> entirely of fries, Coke, and fast-food burgers with the lettuce, ketchup,
> and tomato thrown out, no one should be taking a full daily dose of any
> commercial multivitamin. You are absolutely guaranteed to get too much of
> many nutrients, and to create or exacerbate imbalances in others.

From:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a9-5VyW...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a9-5VyWVsH0J:www.longecity.org/forum/stacks/stack/122-michaels-
tiered-supplement/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
Jolter
What does it cost to go to a doctor and get tested for deficiency? You'd only
need to do that once a decade or after implementing major changes to your
diet. I have a feeling it would come out to less than your strategy of eating
pills "just in case".

~~~
freedomben
It's not quite that simple.. Firstly, it is surprisingly costly and it's
getting more so because of several factors (a big one being insurance company
regulation around requiring tests to be linked to diagnosis codes. This makes
the doctor look bad for giving "unnecessary tests" which in turn makes them
not want to give you a test if there isn't clinical evidence to warrant it,
regardless of your desire and willingness to pay for it).

Secondly, you need to be tested much more often than once a decade. Levels can
vary wildly based on diet in sometimes complicated ways. For example? Vitamin
D levels are dropping despite no changes in vitamin D intake (and sun
exposure). This turns out to be a calcium deficiency, which is required for
vitamin D absorption. The calcium deficiency in turn results from some other
condition not necessarily related to diet.

You also need to be re-tested potentially many times after beginning a
supplement to determine if you are at the correct dose. In some cases when the
supplement can be dangerous at high levels (such as Vitamin B6 or Iron) you
need to be tested regularly for a while to ensure you aren't overdosing
(especially B6 levels too high can cause _nasty_ symptoms).

Source: personal experience doing exactly this with a variety of vitamins and
minerals

~~~
coldtea
> _It 's not quite that simple.. Firstly, it is surprisingly costly and it's
> getting more so because of several factors_

Well, in these parts of Europe it's like €50 or so.

------
jaggederest
So far as I can tell, the only reasonably common deficiencies are vitamin D
and magnesium, and among women anemia.

Every other deficiency is in the tenths of a percent range, well outside of
the level at which people in the general population would be treated if it
were e.g. antibiotics or other non dietary drugs.

~~~
smt88
Vitamin D supplementation is also still controversial, so there isn't even
good consensus on that.

~~~
nabla9
Vitamin D supplementation for vitamin D deficiency that is quite common is not
controversial at all.

If you mean taking more D than is needed, your are correct.

You can measure the D vitamin levels from blood serum.

    
    
      <    30  nmol/L is vitamin D deficiency
    
      30 - 50  nmol/L is considered inadequate
    
      50 - 125 nmol/L is adequate
    
      >    150 nmol/L evidence of potential adverse effects 
    
    

Adequate level has increased over the years.

~~~
cJ0th
but shouldn't you always complement vitamin d intake with vitamin k? If I
recall correctly (I am not sure!) then vitamin d without vitamin k can be
harmful.

~~~
astrange
Vitamin K is found in vegetables, so you don't need to supplement it. I think
the worry is that too much Vitamin D contributes to buildup in arteries over
the long term, and K helps to clean it.

~~~
literallycancer
>Vitamin K is found in vegetables

"Vegetables" is a category that's about as useful in this context as "food".

~~~
52-6F-62
Greens.

I think with vitamin D supplementation you also need to consider vitamin A
intake.

Spinach and eggs every morning more than covers you there

------
truculation
All right, but apart from Vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, B12, K2, iron,
iodine.... what have supplements ever done for us?

~~~
gascan
Northerners with a vitamin D deficiency, 3rd-worlders with iodine deficiency,
vegans with B12 deficiency, carnivores with K12 deficiency, women with iron
deficiency, etc- yes, supplements are quite helpful, when you're acutely
deficient.

But if you're not actually deficient, they can be legitimately harmful, and
your average person reading HN is probably not acutely deficient in any of
these things you listed except possibly vitamin D.

~~~
truculation
I'd rather not wait until I'm 'acutely deficient' before acting -- mildly
deficient is good enough for me, especially given the concept of _triage_ :
metabolism prioritises certain processes over other still important processes
according to intake of key nutrients. Hence recommended minimal amounts may be
sub-optimal in various cases.

Also, given the increased tendency to ban and censor stuff nowadays, I want to
help protect individual choice in this area. If medics have to prescribe them
you know they'll be slow and 50X pricier.

~~~
gascan
At least seek to be smart about it, and perhaps supplement with low values-
10% of DV instead of 10,000%.

Toxic iron dosage can be as low as 2x the therapeutic dose, and men are
especially at risk (most of us on this thread are probably men). Long term
studies have also repeatedly found negative expected outcomes from
supplementing various vitamins/minerals in large quantities (Calcium, C, E, &
A come to mind)

------
mathlizard
I know this is anecdotal evidence, but my granddad took multivitamins
faithfully for years. After my grandma passed from cancer, and due to not
eating as much food with those vitamins, his body had a calcium build up to a
state of calcium poisoning. This did a number on his kidneys. His kidneys did
not recover. Instead of dialysis , he chose hospice. Multivitamins have the
potential to give too much for the body to handle.

~~~
dude01
Yeah, that's a great point -- especially for older people, you have to tell
doctors _all_ supplements you take, because some can affect how fast your
blood will clot. For instance, I believe garlic supplements reduce blood
clotting, so an older person (especially) might have complications during a
surgery.

------
nielsole
I didn't see anything about being 'hooked' in the article. Might have missed
it, otherwise the title is clickbait

~~~
miketery
Maybe hooked is over doing it - probably overly optimistic or misguided is
more correct. But this passage is most relevant.

> Often, preliminary studies fuel irrational exuberance about a promising
> dietary supplement, leading millions of people to buy in to the trend. Many
> never stop. They continue even though more rigorous studies — which can take
> many years to complete — almost never find that vitamins prevent disease,
> and in some cases cause harm.

------
apatters
One dissenting opinion of note mentioned in the article is the Harvard School
of Public Health's recommendation in favor of a daily multivitamin:
[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/multivitamin/](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/multivitamin/)

I don't plan to stop taking mine; it seems like the potential benefits
outweigh the risks.

------
chubot
The way I think of this is: "Food is not a linear combination of nutrients".
The system is more complicated than that. It includes your body and the food
supply.

Science is inherently reductionist (isolating variables), and in the case of
nutrition, this can fail badly. The holistic view is more accurate.

(Although, this is all relative to what has come before; there are of course
basic nutritional deficiencies like lack of vitamin C causing scurvy.)

I have to give credit to Michael Pollan for writing clearly about this over
many years.

------
philip1209
Americans enjoy how a convenient pill can "fix" their micronutrient problems
and make them "healthier." In reality, their macronutrients are so imbalanced
that these little micronutrients do little to counterbalance overall bad
dietary choices. Specifically - the carbohydrate-heavy diet in the USA is
unequivocally contributing to skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, and
heart disease.

Separately - I'm surprised that this article does not mention Vitamin D.
Recent research seems to indicate that it is so important that it is closer to
a hormone than a vitamin. [1]

[1]
[https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/88/2/491S/4649916](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/88/2/491S/4649916)

Edit: For anybody interested in this topic, check out the product and blog of
the startup Virta Health. They are using diet to cure type 2 diabetes. Raised
$45M this week. (I'm not associated with them).
[https://www.virtahealth.com/](https://www.virtahealth.com/)

~~~
bobcostas55
The carbs hypothesis doesn't really hold up once you look around the world.
There are groups of people such as the Hadza and the Mbuti who derive an
enormous portion of their calories from carbs/sugar and show none of the
issues Americans deal with: obesity, insulin resistance, etc.

~~~
philip1209
From what I've read about these hunter-gatherer societies - they don't have a
calorie surplus, and they experience periods of fasting that probably improve
their health.

In developed countries, I think that the availability of food combined with
low satiety from carbohydrates creates a positive feedback loop.

~~~
itchyouch
There's also time-restricted eating. In mouse models, 2 mice with the same bad
diet (high sugar, high fat), but one eating during a 12 hour window and
another eating any time, the 12-hour window mice staved off conditions like
diabetes much longer.

So it's not only what we eat, but "when" we eat as well.

[https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/satchin-
panda](https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/satchin-panda)

------
Greenisus
I'm trying to be as healthy as I possibly can be. I do this with a ketogenic
diet, fasting, jumping rope, stretching, and trying to get enough sleep. I
also take a lot of vitamins. I did it by evaluating them one at a time.

But at some point, maybe it's too much. So I'm taking the idea of "email
bankruptcy" and starting a "supplement bankrupty." So, at some point this
year, I'm going to stop taking everything, see how I feel, and then
reintroduce supplements again one at a time. I don't know if this is a good
idea or not yet, but hopefully it's helpful, so I thought it was worth saying
here.

~~~
theNJR
What are you taking? I cycle keto, do IF (with 3-5 day fasts a few times per
year), lift heavy, etc. I've greatly reduced my vitamins to just vitamin D and
a probiotic. It's really nice not throwing back a ton of pills throughout the
day. In their place, I focus on eating more green vegetables, I take a greens
drink, and Udo's oil (omegas) and drink a ton of BCAAs throughout the day.
Feel much better than when I had 15 different pills.

~~~
Greenisus
Happy to talk about this outside of here! <my-hn-handle>@gmail.com

------
AstralStorm
Many supplements do not actually fill the most common deficiencies. (Either
due to lack of or insufficient amounts of the active ingredient.) Vit. D, B12,
magnesium and potassium are most common in western world. Depending on the
kind of salt or algae you used iodine might be a minor concern. More rare but
also high impact are folic acid metabolism problems which require specific
forms of folate. (There are reliable genetic tests for this.)

And most important part is that in older people impairment of metabolism can
go either (worse absorption/production or clearance) way making RDA not
reliable as it was calculated on healthy people.

~~~
jerf
"Many supplements do not actually fill the most common deficiencies."

I am someone who actually needs supplements. I have at least a moderately bad
case of Celiac disease, the one that everybody knows as "that disease wot gave
us all those gluten-free freaks", but is much lesser well-known as being a
disease that makes it so the digestive system is not as good at extracting
nutrients. I have experienced, diagnosed, and corrected several deficiencies
in myself over the years. (Sometimes I feel like I have to pack my digestive
track with nutrients the way one has to pack a black powder pistol... get _in_
there, you stupid nutrients, tamp tamp tamp...)

So unlike someone who is just sort ambiently taking nutrient supplements in
the vague hope that maybe they'll be helpful, I have actual symptoms to
compare them against and see whether they address the issue.

So I can tell you with great confidence that there are a lot of _very bad_
supplements out there. What you find in the grocery stores may be worthless.
What you find in _speciality stores_ may even be worthless. Fortunately, you
can usually find things online.

Several people here have mentioned magnesium deficiencies as being one of the
common ones. Unfortunately, if you just walk down to your local drug store and
buy magnesium supplements, what you'll get is magnesium oxide. Fans of
chemistry may recall that oxygen binds pretty tightly. I don't know exactly
how bioavailable that is, but I can certainly attest that when I switched to
the chelated magnesium you can find online and nowhere else I've seen, I saw
_huge_ differences very quickly. Trying to supplement magnesium via magnesium
oxide seems to be about as successful as trying to supplement your iron by
eating iron oxide. Won't work.

The drug store also stocks a lot of supplements that use a lower-quality or
less bioavailable version of whatever it is. Vitamin D seems to have gotten
enough attention that they mostly stock the good ones now, but a lot of the
other ones verge on worthless too, despite their labels claming to have 1000%
of your RDA.

The good news is that you can find good stuff if you look hard enough. The bad
news is that it can take some time and effort. The weird news is that often
the good stuff isn't all that much more expensive. Do you want to spend $7 on
something that doesn't do squat or $9 on something that does? The former is
hardly a savings....

Anyway, I would say to anyone who does feel like experimenting, do a bit of
research and _at least_ try with something that may actually work. The data is
useless otherwise.

~~~
brational
What was your experience with Magnesium aspartate such as found in ZMA
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZMA_(supplement)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZMA_\(supplement\)))?
Most of the research I saw was that this would work fine in terms of actual
absorption.

~~~
jerf
No experience. Now that I found one that works, I'm not hunting around.

It probably isn't that hard to find a form of magnesium that is more
bioavailable than slapping an oxygen on it and hoping the body can pull it
apart.

------
marze
So awesome. You don’t need vitamins, because your food has enough. Why?
Because vitamins are added to your food.

~~~
Double_a_92
Especially Vitamin C. It's added everywhere because it's a preservative.

~~~
AstralStorm
Or if you eat fresh / not overcooked plants. (Most have non negligible
amounts.)

------
DataWorker
Didn’t they recently find out that vitamin b causes cancer in higher than
average doses?

~~~
princeb
Hmm that’s interesting. I’m on 1g of B a day (neurobion) for herniated disc.
That’s quite a lot; most supplements do about 50mg of B. This warrants more
investigation.

~~~
amelius
B is divided into different forms. Some of them you can take a lot of (e.g.
B12), while others you should be careful with (e.g. B6). I suggest you do some
research.

------
pasbesoin
You need independent studies.

Unfortunately, the FDA has undergone regulatory capture to a significant
extent -- more from the pharmaceutical companies than from the supplement
manufacturers, including the former trying to use political influence to kill
off or capture the latter.

And universities and their programs have become increasingly dependent upon
and so captured by commercial dollars for funding.

So, we need science to help sort this out. But at the same time, our practiced
science is becoming more political, commercial, and biased.

P.S. We also need science to say "we don't know" instead of "we don't have a
scientific explanation, ergo it's bollocks".

------
yubiox
Last winter I got five colds, each lasting two to three weeks. The winter
before that, I got four, and every winter I can remember before that I got
three colds. Two winters ago I tried an experiment. I washed my hands
religiously and didn't touch my face at all. I had hand sanitizer with me at
all times. It didn't help at all. I asked my doctor what to do and he said
wash your hands.

Last fall when the cold season started I got a cold. Around the time it went
away I started taking 200mg vitamin C every night before bed. I have not had a
cold since. This might be anecdotal but I am now a big believer in vitamin C.

~~~
kriffo
Last fall came before last winter...so you were cured before last winter?

~~~
yubiox
feels like it is still winter I guess

------
oceanman888
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771087)

Similar post at the same time. Did this one go up because it has a shorted
title?

~~~
guiambros
Probably because it was NY Times...

------
miketery
I was walking in Manhattan at a pretty busy corner, and noticed this
supplement store. Typically they're filtered and you forget you ever saw it.
But I couldnt help but think about the amounts of pills or supplements this
store had. The various varieties for any kind of "need" one might have. How
was it selling enough to rent real estate...

I wondered how do people by this stuff believing it helps them (as opposed to
the usual remedy of sleep, exercise, and good diet). Than I asked my self,
maybe I'm missing something! Should I be taking supplements too?

~~~
teamhappy
> I wondered how do people by this stuff believing it helps them

Read Amazon reviews. It's pretty amazing what people can come up with.

I take the usual suspects: Magnesium (I run almost every day) and a Omega
3/Vitamin D combo (I don't eat fish and we don't get a lot of sun here in
northern Germany). Seems like a reasonable thing to be doing but I can't for
the life of me tell any difference with or without them. I do buy the cheap
ones though - maybe I'd feel 10 years younger if I'd buy the top shelf ones...

~~~
Domenic_S
You have to get blood work done to see if there’s a difference

------
ponderatul
Precautionary principle. When we are taking supplements, we are really playing
the odds.

And the odds are that there will be side effects. What side effects and how
many people will be affected is the question. That's because it's hard to
pinpoint the interactions between substances in the supplement and what's in
the body. It's all the more difficult to see the second and third order
effects that might happen.

My principle, taken from NN Taleb's work is try not to take anything unless
you are really sick. It's really a thumb rule, more than anything.

Read Taleb's work.

~~~
mtgx
Dr. Valter Longo, who has been researching the fast-mimicking diet (also
autophagy and longevity) says you're probably safe taking vitamins every 3
days. Because that should minimize or eliminate potential long term damage of
the vitamins while also ensuring you don't become deficient in certain
vitamins. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

In a previous HN thread some were mentioning that "Vitamin E causes cancer"
study. But it was over a 12 year period and the people were taking like 15x
the RDA dose every day. And even then I think it only increased the "chance"
of cancer by like 20% (I may be not be remembering that part right, though).

------
ipunchghosts
Zinc Status and Deficiency

[https://examine.com/supplements/zinc/#summary1-3](https://examine.com/supplements/zinc/#summary1-3)

------
jmnicolas
Yet I manage to totally suppress hay fever symptoms with mega doses of vitamin
C.

Something I can't do with Cetirizin or other "real" drugs (they make me sleepy
too).

~~~
sz4kerto
Tip: try to lower your carbs intake to below 30-40 grams/day. My hay fever
disappears after 3 days of low-carb diet (I tried this diet just for fun, and
now I skip carbs for 2-3 weeks every spring and I don't need antihistamines at
all.)

~~~
kaybe
Do you have more information on this?

~~~
wincy
Sorry, also anecdata, but I've experienced a similar result. Was on daily
allergy pills, eye twitches during allergy season, that sort of stuff, and
started a low carb diet, my skin cleared up and I stop being so damned itchy.

I suspect it's because the diet eliminates some foods that I'm
allergic/sensitive to (how could it not with how many foods it necessitates
cutting out?), so the causation might not actually be the low carb diet, as
some vegans claim a similar result. In that context it stands to reason that
both sets of dieters are finding existing sensitivities and chalking up the
gains to the diet. I found out that for me glutamate, both from natural and
artificial sources, causes substantial headaches, which is a bummer because I
love bone broth. Beans also give me restless legs at night.

So while it's hard to be absolutely scientific in your everyday life, it
doesn't mean it's impossible to glean any sort of improvement in your health
and well-being through personal experimentation.

~~~
pinko
> So while it's hard to be absolutely scientific in your everyday life, it
> doesn't mean it's impossible to glean any sort of improvement in your health
> and well-being through personal experimentation.

This is something I'll always be grateful to the equal parts brilliant and
crazy, late Seth Roberts for teaching me.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964443/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964443/)

------
perseusprime11
It is not about eating right but eating right every day that makes it hard.
The way vitamins work is that you need them every day which is why there is a
daily recommended percentage of all our foods. Which is why it is still a good
idea to supplement with a vitamin tablet.

------
lucas_membrane
Link to a recent lecture on the difficulty of using supplements expeditiously:
[https://vimeo.com/channels/hgp/257767863](https://vimeo.com/channels/hgp/257767863)

------
SuoDuanDao
Who is funding all these studies about vitamin supplementation? It's clearly
not vitamin manufacturers or they'd never be published, but who else has an
interest in the outcome?

~~~
Cthulhu_
> It's clearly not vitamin manufacturers or they'd never be published

Do you honestly believe that or was that cynical? Probably not directly but
the vitamin industry is a big industry and it's in their interest to promote
taking supplements.

~~~
xvaier
Considering that the article lends the reader to understand that studies are
indicating vitamin supplements are not as necessary as we'd like to believe, I
don't think op was being cynical.

Random quote from the article:

> I faithfully chewed those calcium supplements, and then a study said they
> didn’t do any good at all,” said Ms. Bentley

