You hear a lot about culture wars these days – the war on Christmas, the war on women, the war on science. Now I’m taking up arms to fight a new conflict: The war on multivitamins. Friends and countrymen, you will take my Flintstones fruit-flavored vitamin gummy away when you pry it from my cold dead hand.
In recent years, studies have declared multi supplements to be useless at best, dangerous at worst. “Research shows vitamin takers are just as likely to develop cancer or heart disease,” sneered one headline. But the many doctors who’ve advised me over the years to take a daily multi never said the pills would rescue me from ghastly terminal illnesses. They said the supplements were an efficient way to fill the nutritional gaps that even a relatively healthy diet had. That still sounds about right.
In any case, my lifetime of multivitamin use won’t be so easily dismissed. The placebo effect is high: Right now, my body is convinced that Flintstone with a Stoli chaser is a major source of whole grains. Top that, anti-vitamin killjoys.
