The Man Who Convinced Us We Needed Vitamin Supplements

An anonymous reader writes "The Atlantic has an interesting piece on the life and work of the scientist most responsible for moms around the world giving their kids Vitamin C tablets to fight off colds, Linus Pauling. From the article: 'On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn't. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer. "It's been a tough week for vitamins," said Carrie Gann of ABC News. These findings weren't new. Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives. Still, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements. What few people realize, however, is that their fascination with vitamins can be traced back to one man. A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack.'"

Comments

Diet and laziness

[dreamchaser]

In very rare cases does someone need to take any supplements at all. If one pays attention to having a proper diet one can get all the vitamins needed naturally. Part of the whole vitamin craze is how lazy people are. It can take some thought and effort to eat a healthy diet containing all the nutrients a body needs to thrive. It's quite worth doing so though.

Re:Diet and laziness

[pipatron]

In very rare cases does someone need to take any supplements at all. If one pays attention to having a proper diet one can get all the vitamins needed naturally. Part of the whole vitamin craze is how lazy people are. It can take some thought and effort to eat a healthy diet containing all the nutrients a body needs to thrive. It's quite worth doing so though.

So uhm, yeah. Which one is it? Rare cases or almost all cases?

Re:Diet and laziness

[jcr]

Food today, even freshly grown food, isn't the same the world over, and it isn't the same as it was 50 years ago. It is almost certainly poorer in quality.

Citation needed. What reason do you have to believe that food quality has diminished in the last 50 years?

-jcr

Re:Diet and laziness

[Cyberax]

What the fuck? Nutrients do not "find their way into vegetables" (apart from microelements like zinc or iodine that are concentrated by some plants) - they are _synthesized_ by plants. And let me tell you - the current cultivars are almost invariably better at that than their 1950 era relatives.

Re:The truth is

[dinfinity]

What IS bad for you are la mayoría de pills, supplements, things in cans, fake 'diet' brownies and cookies, sugar, processed foods, vegetable oils except for olive, processed starches, and alta energy/low nutrition foods que conforman the bulk of the 'western diet'. Eat meat, quality fats, las frutas enteras and veg and steer clear of the alta rentabilidad, easy to produce artículos hechos de grains and processed starches.

You're kidding, right? Five very insightful paragraphs showing how hard research into nutrition is and how most 'nutritional facts' have no proper basis in science followed by a ridiculous list of different largely unsupported nutritional claims?

'[Processed foods are bad]'? Really?? What the fuck is 'processed food' even?
Next you're going to say that 'additives' and 'chemicals' are 'bad for you'.

Re:Peer review

[girlintraining]

You can't really blame him for reaching the conclusion that he did.

Well, we could, but it's silly. Science is a self-correcting mechanism. But just like an airplane in flight, it's almost always flying in the wrong direction. Somehow, you still manage to get where you're going, because of minute course corrections. I take great offense to this editor posting such drivel on the front page of a website that caters to the scientific and technical communities, and nothing short of a front page retraction is satisfactory. The sooner -- the better. I can understand getting one's facts wrong, but this is just plain slanderous! This kind of crap should never have made it past even the most mediocre editorial staff.