I’m not surprised. A vast number of studies end up showing what the study authors set out to find in the first place—i.e., they’re biased to begin with.
Anyone eating a balanced diet does not need supplements. Pill popping is a rather new phenomenon—humans certainly did not evolve to require nutritional supplements to survive. The only time such supplements are actually needed is when there is clearly malnutrition. We have a good food supply—most of us have never even seen someone with malnutrition.
As a biochemist, I am very hesitant to put anything into my body that is not food. You either have enough nutrients, or you don’t—consuming 100 or 1000 times your daily needs is not 100 or 1000 times better. It puts stress on your body, because now your liver and kidneys must work extra hard to remove all those excess chemicals (yes, vitamins and minerals are chemicals) from your body. And if the vitamin is fat-soluble, then your body cannot remove it easily, and it can have very deleterious effects by being present for prolonged periods at levels far higher than the body’s needs.
Of course, the nutritional supplement industry is a multi-billion dollar per year business. They have a vested interest in convincing people that more = better. Otherwise, we’d all be satisfied with good, wholesome food the way God and nature intended for us to eat.
If we can adequately define much less obtain a balanced diet. I am dubious. No, not doobious - dubious. ;-)
I take a multi-vitamin/mineral/whatever pill containing no mega-doses. That's so I get at least some of all that good stuff we're supposed to get. I take additional vitamin D because I don't believe we get what we need from either sunlight or diet.
Blasphemy!
It is also a rather new phenomenon that humans stay indoors because of "warnings" of skin cancer from the Bad Sun. Or they slather themselves in chemicals (all over the body's largest organ) to "prevent" the sun's rays from penetrating skin. . .this absolutely leads to a Vit. D deficiency.
Add to this (recent phenom) the nutritional depletion in just about all of the foods we purchase from the grocery store shelves...soil depletion and better-living-thru-chemistry has turned the food supply into a toxic soup. Think the body doesn't need some extra help through supplementation to overcome the effects?
There's enough clinical and experiential data out there showing the benefits of increased Vit. D supplementation in higher doses than the gov't's RDA of a miniscule 400IU per day.
"Mal"nutrition comes in many forms - not just starving Ethiopian children. . .we see it EVERYDAY in the form of the increase of degenerative disease.
I like what you wrote, but the soil is not rich in minerals like it use to be.
Have you forgotten the prevalence of goiters prior to iodine supplementation?
And how about rickets prior to Vitamin D supplementation?
Vitamin D RDA’s were developed to stop rickets and rickets only. To that extent, it was short sighted. And Vitamin D deficiency, while it can be corrected with “pill popping,” is not a matter of eating a “balanced diet.” It is a matter of latitude and living indoors.
I see people with what I call sub-clinical malnutrition every day. You can be fat and malnourished.
Uh, humans originated in equatorial Africa, where there is LOTS of sunlight. During most of the evolutionary cycle, clothes were not available (not invented yet). So the protohumans DID evolve to need a relatively high level of vitamin D. Migration to colder climes (with much less intense sunlight) resulted in deficiencies, which evolution attempted to counter with less melanin in the skin, but folks were still spending most of their time in the sun. With the advent of civiliation, what with clothes, heated buildings, and the move of most people off of farms, it is impossible for "some" humans to get adequate Vitamin D from natural sources.
The same appears to be true of Vitamin C. Most animals synthesize it internally. Humans do not, but the evolutionary explanation as to why is less clear-cut than for Vitamin D.