The Scoop On Vitamins and Supplements
By ConsumerReports.org // April 8, 2012
Healthcare Alert
EDITOR’S NOTE: There are a dozen or more vitamins that play an essential role in a wide variety of our bodies’ functions. Getting these from a healthy, balanced diet is theoretically possible, and many people actually do.
However, ensuring that what we eat and drink provides all vital nutritional elements can be difficult, especially in this day and age when lives are so busy that it can often be a challenge to plan vitamin-rich meals or monitor their nutritional value.
It is very easy to buy into the the use of heavily marketed over-the-counter nutritional supplements and vitamins, the advertisements for which are ubiquitous in all media modalities. Annual vitamin and supplement sales total more than $20 billion, and more than half of U.S. adults take vitamins.
This comprehensive look by ConsumerReports.org at the true value of vitamins and supplements, with references to some of the most recent peer reviewed research on the subject, highlights the important “Don’ts,” and provides sage advice related to safe and effective vitamin/supplement use.
COURTESY OF CONSUMER REPORTS–Vitamins, minerals, and supplements, which are supposed to strengthen your bones, boost your memory, protect your heart, and help you stay healthy, are popular—more than 50 percent of U.S. adults take these widely sold over-the-counter products.
But evidence shows that excessive vitamin and supplement consumption is unnecessary, and many products could be a waste of money. What’s more, some are potentially harmful.
CLICK HERE to read the complete report from ConsumerReports.org.
