Multi-Vitamin Controversy

Reversing a long-standing anti-vitamin policy, The Journal of the American Medical Association recently advised that all adults should a multivitamin every day. Now, the medical community is finally acknowledging what we in the sports nutrition industry have known all along: that taking extra supplemental vitamins is good for you!

Scientists are finally acknowledging that vitamins may help prevent such chronic diseases such heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis, according to Drs. Robert Fletcher and Kathleen Fairfield of Harvard University, who wrote the new guidelines.The announcement reverses JAMA’s two-decades-old position that multivitamins are a waste of time and money. JAMA held that people could get all of the nutrients they needed from their diets.

If you are going to supplement with vitamins, don’t go by the RDA’s (recommended daily allowance) set forth by the government. They are antiquated and too low. The National Academy of Sciences, which sets RDAs, is revising its recommendations based on recent research showing that daily dietary needs for vitamins are higher than originally anticipated. Keep in mind that the reason RDA’s were established in the first place was to provide guidelines that would prevent symptoms of vitamin-deficiency disorders.