The Truth About Supplements

Why herbal and dietary supplements are often unnecessary and may even be harmful

This post is from my previous newsletter, Food Psych Weekly.

Welcome back to Food Psych Weekly, the newsletter where I answer your questions about intuitive eating and the anti-diet approach.

Today I won’t be answering a question because I’m on deadline for my upcoming book, The Wellness Trap, working to incorporate changes from my wonderful fact-checker and copyeditor. This is an exciting part of the process because it means the real meat of the book is almost done—from there, it’s mostly just proofreading the book 1,000 times before it goes off to the printer!

So this week, instead of a Q&A, I thought I’d give you a little sneak peek at the book.

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 2, which covers how the wellness-culture belief that “natural” is always better can do significant damage to individual and collective well-being. This section deals with the supplement industry.

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When I was growing up, my family had an entire kitchen cabinet devoted to over-the-counter medications of various kinds. There was a colorful array of cold medicines and analgesics, antacids and ear drops, most of which were expired from lack of use. But scattered between the sticky bottles of cough suppressant and half-empty blister packs of antihistamines were the herbal and dietary supplements, and those saw a lot more action. When we felt even the slightest tickle in our throats, we downed vitamin C, zinc, and echinacea. If we had dry skin or hair, we popped vitamin E and flax seed oil. My mom took big, chalky-looking pills filled with some kind of animal cartilage for a chronic knee injury, but they were there for the taking anytime my sister or I had a twinge of joint pain. As a teenager I chomped calcium chews designed for postmenopausal women. A daily multivitamin was de rigueur.

I continued using supplements as an adult, and never thought much about it until I started studying to become a dietitian and learned that except in the case of deficiencies or in certain special populations (for instance, people who are pregnant or breastfeeding), vitamin and mineral supplements generally aren’t necessary.

In fact, the vast majority of supplements don’t have any demonstrable benefit.