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Opening Arguments

Just eat your peas!

Enough with the multivitamins!

“We believe that the case is closed -- supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful,” concluded the authors of the editorial summarizing the new research papers, published Dec. 16 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough.”

They went on to urge consumers to not “waste” their money on multivitamins.

“The ‘stop wasting your money’ means that perhaps you're spending money on things that won't protect you long term,” editorial co-author Dr. Edgar Miller, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, told CBS News’ chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook. “What will protect you is if you spend the money on fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, low fat dairy, things like that ..exercising would probably be a better use of the money.”

I confess to not being terribly shocked by this. This has become The Age of Hype Suddenly Dispatched By Reality. One more claim that isn' true? Yawn.

But I've been taking multivitamins for years now, and I suspect giving them up will be hard to do without some trepidation, no matter what I know intellectually. Could a case be made that the anxiety caused by multivitamin withdrawal might be so bad that the money spent on the supplements isn't really wasted?

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