Myth: A multivitamin can make up for a bad diet. If only! A Women’s Health Initiative study of 161,808 midlife women showed multivitamin-takers are no healthier than those who don’t take them when it comes to cancer, heart disease or stroke, according to study author Marian Neuhouser, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle. Vitamin supplements were popularized in the early 1900s, when it was difficult to get fresh fruits and veggies year-round, resulting in vitamin-deficiency diseases such as rickets (bowed legs and deformed ribs from lack of vitamin D) or pellagra (skin and mental problems from lack of the B vitamin niacin).

Now, you’re unlikely to be seriously deficient if you eat an average American diet, however, “Multivitamins have maybe two dozen ingredients; plants have hundreds of useful compounds,” Neuhouser noted. If you just take a multivitamin, you’re missing lots of beneficial compounds. The study (showed) that multivitamin use has little or no influence on the risk of common cancers, cardiac disease, or total mortality in postmenopausal women.” Everyone’s needs differ – your doctor can tell you about your unique chemistry and what supplements you might need, or which might be harmful in excess or combination. Meanwhile, shop your Price Chopper/Market 32 produce aisle!

– Helen Susan Edelman, LiveSmart Project Director, livesmart@classroomenrichment.org;

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