Not necessarily at all. For example, when I drive up the base of the Eastern Sierra, I drive by a very large Crystal Geyser water plant, which is bottling “spring” water from the Sierra Nevada. But those in the local towns may be getting water from the L A Aqueduct feed.
I buy Crystal Geyser water, and maybe they are fooling me, I do believe it tastes much better than my tap water + Brita Filter that I had been using for years. And my tap water is not that bad. Now, I live in the South Bay, but the folks in SF get Hetch Hetchy water out of their tap.
Of course this all varies tremendously depending on the taste and quality of the local tap water and what the bottled alternative is. What I can definitively say is that I dislike all the unfiltered tap water I’ve ever experienced in a fairly broad geographic area, and I’m constantly sucking on bottles of spring water that I buy about four or five cases of at a time. It’s certainly not psychological – on the rare occasions that I’ve run out, I sometimes pour tap water into an empty water bottle out of desperation, and later, if I forget and take a swig, I’m instantly reminded that I’m drinking shit. And tap water here is supposed to be of high quality and carefully monitored, technically “safer” than less regulated spring water.
Sorry for the hijack. It’s just so wrong for many reasons to say that “bottled water is just tap water”.
They did, but then they realized that plain old “words on photos” weren’t really photoplasties, which typically required some sort of image manipulation. So the former became known as “image macros.” That change took place back in late 2012/early 2013, as I recall.
Within the last few months, the name for image macros was changed again, to “pictofacts.” A little more descriptive, IMHO, since that’s what they are: pictures with facts.
We’ve had countless threads on this. Even for someone with a poor diet, there is no evidence that a multivitamin does any good (and it may do some harm) unless you have a specifically diagnosed deficiency or belong to a specific risk group (in which case, you still don’t need a multivitamin, you need a supplement for whatever you’re deficient in).
Basically, no one should take a multivitamin. They’re useless in almost all cases, actively harmful in a small number of cases, and beneficial in an even smaller number, but even that number goes to zero if you take out the cases where narrower supplementation would be better.
Even medically recommended supplements aren’t without their downside. Women who might become pregnant are advised to supplement with folic acid, even though it raises the risk of certain cancers because neural tube defects (which you get in children if the mothers didn’t get enough folic acid) are so bad. But in fact the risk of those is low because we already supplement all foods made with flour with folic acid, and its very easy to get enough in a normal diet.
No, pretty much they are all wrong.
while carrots dont give you mystical nite vision, the Lutien and beta-carotene are good for over all eye health:
Roman orgies? Well, during the Republic yes, rather than sex they were hedonistic orgies of food and wine. But according to Suetonius there were some sex orgies in Imperial days.
wiki :*The full breakfast became popular in the British Isles during the Victorian era, and appeared as one among many suggested breakfasts in home economist Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861). *thats 30 years before Bernays was born.
All the water we drink is piss too. They- mostly- treat the tap water to improve the taste- and occasionally the healthfulness (Flint).
That would be true in a perfect world, for the reason you state: it is always preferable to supplement for only the deficient nutrient.
But it’s a rather naive vision of how actual humans live their lives. The reality is that there are enough common nutrient deficiencies for people like vegetarians and athletes and the elderly that large groups of people really aren’t getting enough of a handful of nutrients, and it is not easy for them to fix that through diet. Yes, in a perfect world they would sit down with their family doctor and sort through their diets and get narrow supplementation in the right amounts. But I suspect that the people who say that have a level of access to medical care that is, to put it mildly, unusual in the United States.
Yes, there are risks and benefits to multi-vitamins, both of which are relatively small in magnitude according to the actual science. The best studies show that some people benefit and others do not. But for a lot of people, a multivitamin is a perfectly sensible choice in light of the risks and their limitations, and the advice we should be giving is to help people determine whether they are in the group likely to benefit or likely to be harmed, IMO.
In this and other threads on the topic of multi-vitamins it’s amazing to me how many people are convinced that they are somehow not getting enough vitamins in their diet, when there is plenty of medical journalism that says that this is absolutely false.
The use and justification of a daily multi-vitamin as a sort of “just in case” approach to life is exactly how the whole alternative medicine economic model works. Would you recommend that people use homeopathy, or cupping, or crystals “just in case?”
wouldn’t it be easier and make more sense to just eat a piece of ruit every now and then?
mc
The CDC says different:
https://www.cdc.gov/nutritionreport/pdf/4page_%202nd%20nutrition%20report_508_032912.pdf
Over 30% of some Americans arent getting enough Vit D.
Over 10% of kids not enough B6.
Nearly 10% of women not enough iron. Iodine for quite a few.
Folic acid is a critical vitamin for pregnant women.
6% of us arent getting enuf Vit C.
So, yeah, since it’s hard to tell if you fall into one of those 6% or 10% groups or even 3%, then they* are* cheap insurance. And are critical for some groups.
here we go again! What the CDC says is:
It does go on to point out that certain groups do have some deficiencies
so according to your own source 90% of Americans are just fine and the others fall into specific and well defined groups so it’s not “hard to tell if you fall into one of those . . .groups”
mc
Yep, 90% of the general populace.** Not 100%. **
approximately the same percentage of Americans have diabetes. Would you take insulin just in case you were in that 10%?
mc