There are many new researches popping up that apparently show multivitamins are “useless”. One showed that they did nothing for heart health, another found that they did nothing to mitigate or prevent cognitive decline, and another showed they did not decrease the chances of an early death. These studies were all done not too far apart from each in as far as time goes. So if these supplements don’t do anything to aid a person’s health, how did they come into existence? How would people have started to believe in them in the first place?

Multivitamins may not be wonder pills that can save everyone’s life all the time but to say they are completely useless is a bit excessive. As director of nutrition for WebMD, Kathleen Zelman said, these multivitamins can plug in nutritional gaps. By this she means that if a person’s diet is lacking in some kind of mineral or vitamin regularly, a supplement for that mineral every now and again of that mineral could help pick up the nutritional “slack”. For example, if a person’s regular diet has little to no iron, they may consider taking iron tablets to get their necessary does of iron.

Even though she feels this way, she suggests that people try their best to get all their nutritional needs from foods. Vitamins deficiencies are not random. This means that a certain group of people are likely to have similar deficiencies. For example, studies can show that young women tend to be low in iodine which is crucial for brain development in a fetus. Mexican American women and children are more likely to be iron deficient. This goes to show that people in certain often have similar problems and some supplements are recommended and useful for them.

Works Cited

Shute, Nancy. “The Case Against Multivitamins Grows Stronger.” NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.

Zelman, Kathleen. “What Vitamins and Supplements Can and Can’t Do.”WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.