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Jun 17

Listen: The Empty Promise of Vitamins – The Atlantic

Diets that Work Comments Off on Listen: The Empty Promise of Vitamins – The Atlantic

Hamblin: If you can add a multivitamin and not change anything, then go for it. Whatever. I mean, you might waste your money.

Wells: Is there really no science behind a vitamin being good for you?

Hamblin: Not unless you have a deficiency in any of those areas.

Wells: And do people generally have deficiencies? Does our modern diet mean you have some deficiencies?

Hamblin: No, you need so little. And anything that you would be likely to get deficient in, we fortify. Even pastas and cereals, theyre fortified with vitamins in case you do just eat packaged foods all the time and never eat fresh produce.

Wells: Youre telling me that, like, my Cheerios have a multivitamin in them?

Hamblin: Oh, yeah. Theyre loaded with vitamins. The reason theres vitamin D in milk is because we add it to the milk. We found ways to make an ultra-processed diet that would avoid vitamin deficiencies. And thats actually a problem for us.

Wells: So our diet is already basically the equivalent of a multivitamin, where weve just randomly put vitamins in the crap we eat?

Hamblin: Thats what fortification is. Its one of those things that is sort of like oxygen. You are getting enough and getting more is not going to help you. The one outlier in the coronavirus-vitamin discussion is vitamin D. Theres almost nothing in our diet that gets us vitamin D. It shouldnt even be called a vitamin, in my humble opinion.

Wells: What is the definition of a vitamin?

Hamblin: There is no definition. Its derived from this marketing term, vital amines. We thought they all had an amine group on them and turns out they dont.

Wells: Thats what vitamin is?!

Hamblin: Yeah. A great book on this is Vitamania, by Catherine Price. It goes into the whole supplement industry and how these ideas started.

Wells: What are vitamins?

Hamblin: Its a random smattering of compounds. We call them micronutrients, as opposed to, say, macronutrients like fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Micro- nutrients are these tinier ones, which you need, like, the amount of the head of a pin every month. Most of them occur in food. Vitamin D is one that doesnt. You make it yourself being out in the sun. And you dont need a lot, just a few minutes.

There is not evidence that laying out and tanning is good for you. Thats still a major cause of skin cancer. As long as you have some exposure, even just sitting near a window, that should be fine. But there are some serious researchers who believe that there are people who are in a gray area, who might not be getting enough vitamin D, especially when told to stay home. When youre really limiting outdoor exposure, it could be good to take a supplement.

Wells: So its not that vitamin D somehow fights off the coronavirus. Its that if you dont have enough vitamin Dand there could be a slightly elevated percentage of people who dont have enough vitamin D, because were all staying inside a lotthen your immune system can get all wacky, and therefore you would want to take a supplement. What about vitamin C? At the beginning of this, I was taking a vitamin C supplement every day.

Link:
Listen: The Empty Promise of Vitamins - The Atlantic

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