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Last year, researchers published new findings from the Women"s Health Initiative, a long-term study of more than 160000 midlife women. The data showed that multivitamin-takers are no 1 than those who don"t take the pills, at least when it comes to the big diseases—cancer, heart disease, and 2 . "Even women with poor diets weren"t helped by taking a multivitamin," says the study author Marian Neuhouser, PhD, in the cancer 3 program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle.
Vitamin 4 came into fashion in the early 1900s, when it was difficult or impossible for most people to get a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. Back then, vitamin-deficiency diseases weren"t unheard-of: the bowed legs and 5 ribs caused by a severe shortage of vitamin D, or the skin problems and mental confusion caused by a lack of vitamin B. But these days, you"re 6 unlikely to be seriously deficient if you eat an average American diet, if only because many packaged foods are vitamin-enriched. Sure, most of us could do with a couple more daily 7 of produce, but a multivitamin doesn"t do a good job at 8 those. "Multivitamins have maybe two dozen 9 —but plants have hundreds of other useful compounds," Neuhouser says. "If you just take a multivitamin, you"re missing lots of compounds that may be providing benefits." There is one group that probably ought to keep taking a multivitamin: women of reproductive age. The supplement is insurance 10 pregnancy.