Issue #9

Vitamin and Mineral Supplements:
Do You Even Need Them?

The issue of whether or not you need to take vitamin and mineral supplements can seem quite confusing. On the one hand you hear some experts saying, "Forget about supplements. All they do is make your urine expensive. You can get all the vitamins and minerals you need from the food you eat."

But then you'll read about another expert who says, "Because of our fast food lifestyle and the fact that a lot of the vitamins and trace minerals that we need in our foods aren't there because of depleted soils, you should definitely take vitamin supplements." So who is right?

Well, a few years ago the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) did a comprehensive survey of more than 20,000 adults in the United States. The survey checked their daily dietary intake of 10 essential nutrients. And do you know what the survey discovered? The survey found that not a single person had adequate dietary intake of these 10 nutrients. Not even one!

Then there's the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). For decades JAMA has been a well respected source for information on medicine and disease.

Over the last 30 years JAMA has been saying that vitamin supplements aren't necessary in one's diet. However, here's what the Journal had to say in their June 2002 issue.

"Most people do not consume an optimal amount of all vitamins by diet alone. Pending strong evidence of effectiveness from randomized trials, it appears prudent for all adults to take vitamin supplements."

That's quite a turn around on the issue of vitamin supplements, wouldn't you say? If you want to see this article that appeared in the June 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, click here.

Here's another opinion, from the world's foremost antioxidant research scientist, Dr. Lester Packer. According to Dr. Packer, a Professor for the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Southern California,

"People require, according to the nutrition textbooks, 53 different nutrients. The real danger is if they're deficient in more than one. That's why I would recommend that everybody take a vitamin micronutrient complex that will touch all the bases."

As far as I'm concerned, the message is clear. If you want your body to get all the essential nutrients it needs, add vitamin and mineral supplements to your diet. But how do you go about deciding which vitamins and minerals you need and how much of each vitamin and mineral to take? To learn about how to do this, continue to the next page.

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