I am a college student and I have to feed myself, ergo I am probably poorly nutrited. (Nutrited?) Anyway, my average daily food intake is some yoghurt, a peanut butter sandwich, and maybe some chicken and rice if I’m feeling ambitious/desperate. With a vegetable or so thrown in. Yeah, I don’t eat much.
So I went to the store the other day to look at multivitamins, and stared slack-jawed at the staggering array of choices. What the hell? I finally picked out the generic Kroger Essential because it was cheap (college student, remember) and, well, they haven’t killed me yet.
The cute little bottle says I’ll be getting 100% of vitamins A, B1, B2, B12, C, D, E, niacin, and folic acid, and panthotenic acid (whatever that is) if I take it every day (har, har). Should I be looking for anything else in addition? Does it make a difference at all? I want to make sure my teeth stay where they belong, in my head.
If you are female, and it sounds like you are, you should probably be taking calcium supplements also.
I took a nutrition class in college and I asked the prof if anybody really needed to take vitamins. The answer he gave me made sense… if you eat everything you should and never skip meals then you probably don’t need vitamins. If, however, you don’t eat perfectly every day then taking vitamins is probably a good idea.
Can you get a free checkup with a doctor? They can run a blood analysis and check for any deficiencies such as iron, which you may be suffering from.
I’d add a Magnesium, Calcium, Zinc blend (they are offered in one pill) and Flax Seed or Fish Oil (Omega 3) supplements. Iron too, cuz you’re a chick and probably don’t eat enough red meat. Also one baby aspirin to reduce risk of colon cancer.
And yet everyone still uses them. Look at the latest large study that comapred calcium and vitamin D supplement users with non-users and found essentially no results.
Frankly, there’s a paucity of double-blind placebo control studies which show any effect for vitamin supplementation, and when they are carried out overwhelmingly they show null results.
My doctor made me take an iron blood test, because he’s anal like that. It turns out that despite my eating habits and penchant for bleeding a lot, my iron levels are just fine. Amazing.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s a lot of pills. Blech! When…if…I run out, I’ll try to find that stuff included, but I can barely remember to put my pants on in the morning, no way in hell I’d go for taking 8 pills a day. Plus I’m reasonably certain cancer has little to do with diet, and a lot to do with genetic predispotion. I’ll take my chances.
Thanks for the info, threemae. I kind of figured, but it’s better safe than sorry. I like my teeth where they are, in my head.
Certainly diet affects one’s likelihood of getting cancer but I think that this is more likely to be mediated by the actual food you eat rather than the multivitamins you take. So, she might be better off using her limited food and nutrition budget on salad or something with high fiber or antioxidants and a relatively well established link to reducing cancer risks than splurging on multivitamins that don’t seem to do anything.
Not for nuthin’, but the NIH studies seem to contradict themselves.
Might the difference with the studies you quoted have something to do with an elderly population that suffers from a general decline in absorption of nutrients? Just a thought.
I don’t disagree. It’s best to get your nutrition from whole foods than supplements. But I don’t know very many people who can consume the required 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables in one day in addition to the grains, fats, proteins that are also necessary.
Plus, whole foods can be pricey while processed are much easier to shop, cook and eat. Most people, given the choice, will choose the shortcut unless they are very aware and methodical about their diets.
As to vitamins, my take on them is like doing a regular colo-rectal exam - it can’t hurt.
Yeah, my guess is that the Vitamin D and Calcium do something for populations which are at risk or already have osteoporosis, but for healthy college aged women with already limited food budgets?
At any rate, I know that this board has had the, “how expensive is healthy food?” debate a bazillion and three times, so I won’t go into that again, but I think it’s probably good advice to say, “don’t spend the rent money on multivitamins.”
The recommended stuff changes so much that I tend to ignore all the short term advice anyway. I was talking about it at work the other day actually, and pretty much everyone agreed it’s all bunk, and we’re talking a couple of dozen doctors/nurses all agreeing on something. This year overcooked food causes cancer, next year it cures it.
I take b supplements just because of a genetic deficiency. If I don’t my lips split and my skin gets really bad, so it’s an obvious improvement when I take them. If I ate lots of broccoli like my mum does I wouldn’t need to take 'em.
Actually recent research suggest the opposite: the extra calcium can help build bones when you’re younger but has not proven to reduce fractures in older post menopausal women. Take the calcium and Vitamin D now (and keep up with the weight bearing exercises).
Most doctors recommend a multi vitamin because it’s a cheap way to cover all the bases. Even people with the best intentions often have trouble getting all their vitamins from food and a multivitamin will only run you a couple of cents per day.
Anyway, I just received the latest Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Nutrition Action Newsletter and, coincidently, the feature story is on multivitamins. CSPI are the guys (an independent nonprofit group) who are always telling us not to eat movie theatre popcorn 'cause of the ungodly calorie load and not to waste your money on unproven supplements. These guys are serious about nutrition.
I’ll give you the overview.
Multivitamins are good.
Things often left out of multis: calcium and magnesion because of bulk. Can easily get these in other supplements.
Make sure the multi has chromium, selenium, zinc, and Vitamin K.
Don’t get too much: Vitamin A, Vitamin E, iron (more of a concern for males who eat a lot of meat), or zinc. Look for a multi that has 100% the Daily Value but not more. More isn’t always better.
A few of their evaluated recs for premenopausal women are Kirkland Premium with Herbs (Costco), Rite Aid Whole Source, and Walgreens Ultra Choice.
Cite? I know what, “they say,” “they,” say lot of things. But where are the studies to back it up?
Here are some that suggest no or minimal effect:
This is a review which states: “Therefore, in clinical, longitudinal, retrospective, and cross-sectional studies, neither increased consumption of dairy products, specifically, nor total dietary calcium consumption has shown even a modestly consistent benefit for child or young adult bone health. CONCLUSION: Scant evidence supports nutrition guidelines focused specifically on increasing milk or other dairy product intake for promoting child and adolescent bone mineralization.”
Given that bone has a half-life of 20 months and is underoing constant remodeling, I frankly have a hard time beliveing that a .5% increase in mean BMD at the age 25 will prevent a hip fracture at 70, and furthermore it seems that calcium supplementation isn’t the way to go about it. Physical load-bearing activity seems like it could be pretty promising, but more studies are needed to establish its causal link to bone health. But exercise on the whole is definitely a, “good thing,” so given the OP’s situation, I might simply suggest skipping over the MV’s, improving her overall diet, and going for some more exercise if she can fit it into her life.
Let me take that back. I won’t suggest skipping anything, I’ll just say that there’s not much evidence that they do anything but they probably won’t kill you, so if it really is just pennies, why not? But I don’t see the support for it.
