Taking A Multivitamin Probably Doesn't Improve Your Health

Yet more evidence that you probably don't need to take expensive supplements

Pictured: Supplements. Probably useless for health. Look at the pretty colours. Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

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Supplements are everywhere, because people love to take them. There are supermarket aisles lined with dozens, or even hundreds, of different little pill bottles filled with everything from vitamin B12 to krill oil. The promise of a supplement is heady and alluring - for just a few dollars a day, you can improve your health, and maybe even extend your life. This has spawned a multi-billion dollar global industry - supplements are very big business these days.

Except, the data doesn’t really support the idea that people should take supplements at all. Overwhelmingly, studies have failed to find a benefit for the vast majority of supplements that you can buy off the supermarket shelves. And a new study has just come out that once again supports the pretty well-demonstrated fact that you probably don’t need to take a supplement.

This time it’s multivitamins. Let’s look at the data, and why I won’t be taking a multivitamin supplement any time soon.