Vitamins and Hope

Goodbye, Ginko; see ya, C and it's a denoument for D.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have said formally and with research what I have believed for a long time: vitamins and other supplements are a waste of time and money. They do nothing for your health. Nothing. Actually, some of them have been proven to hurt your health, according to the researchers.

What a relief! I own vitamins, but I very rarely take them, not only because my memory is poor, but I have always just somehow figured they didn't really do anything. My sweetie faithfully puts an effervescent Vitamin C pill into his water each morning and while I wonder about it and I generally don't join him, I don't say much about it because his mom swears by it and who am I to argue?

We want to believe vitamins work, because it's so much easier in our minds to take a pill than to eat right, which is more veggies, less fast food, less fat and generally fewer calories. Many of us feel like we're OK to pig out on the burgers and chips: we're covered because we took a multi-vitamin this morning.

I don't exactly know why, but I was never convinced. Now I can feel safe throwing them out and I don't have to waste money buying new ones; the researchers have proven there's just no point.

But don't worry about the companies involved in the 20 billion dollar vitamin and supplement business. The people who believe in vitamins won't believe this news, no matter what pedigree of scientist says they're useless. After all, Mom said so.

And I vow to say nothing, except maybe under my breath.