Which is a healthier way of getting a balanced dose of vitamins and minerals?
I remember reading somewhere that the human body absorbs nutrients better when they come in a food source as compared to a vitamin, but the fruit juice will have a lot of empty calories. Oh, and by fruit juice I mean the kind that isn’t just sugar such as V8. Maybe I should have said “fruit and vegetable drink” instead.
And I know that neither is really essential if you eat a good diet, but I’m a 26 year old dude who can’t cook to save his life. While I should really be starting a thread on learning how to cook… baby steps 
A good multivitamin will contain stuff you just don’t get in fruit juice, so the pills are better. Fruit juice isn’t really a lot better for you than sweetened carbonated drinks - it’s acidic, sugary and not particularly nutritious in many of the ways that matter.
Eating a variety of whole fruit, on the other hand, is better than drinking soda, because you’re getting fibre and probably a few other things that don’t come out in the juice, or are lost during processing of juice. (although this is still not comparable to multivitamins, because those contain stuff that just isn’t in any fruit. It’s not really an equitable comparison.
But there are no such things as healthy and unhealthy foods, only healthy and unhealthy diets. A healthy balanced diet is going to be better than a bad diet plus vitamin pills, because although the pills supplement what you’re missing, they don’t subtract the components you could be eating too much of.
V8, despite it’s image, isn’t much better than any other sugary juice cocktail. It’s got lots of vitamin C, a good bit of vitamin A, some fiber, but also a surprising amount of sugar and sodium. It’s really not much more nutritious than your average orange juice.
Yes, vitamins from food are absorbed better than those in pill form. BUT, and here’s the thing, the makers of those vitamins KNOW this and they account for it. So the results on the multivitamin are about what you are going to get.
Now I say “about” 'cause there are variations from maker to maker and people naturally have differences in absorbtion rates.
But here’s the thing, in the Western world vitamin deficiencies are uncommon. Yes, they happen but usually they occur in small children and older people. In the West, an healthy young male/female is going to have to go out of his/her way to get a vitamin deficiency.
You have to think of vitamins as catalysts. Once you get the amount you need that is all you need. It’s like lighting a stove, you can use a match and it’ll light. But if you use a blow torch does it light any faster?
That said, some people do need a bit more vitamins than others. For instance, smoking is hard on vitamin C, so smokers should up their intake of that a bit.
Some vitamins, also act as antioxidants and pseudo-hormones (vitamin E and vitamin D)
Uncommon in the sense of serious deficiencies, causing, for example ricketts (vitamin D) or scurvy (vitamin C), but slight deficiencies are common. There’s a limit to the amount of any mineral or vitamin that’s useful for the body, but that limit is commonly not met. If you do not get enough vitamin C, for example, you will bruise easily, but you likely won’t have scurvy.
How many people eat a well-balanced diet? It is common for people not to do so.
Water soluble vitamins are better absorbed without food. Fat soluble vitamins, need, of course, fat to be absorbed.