The Whole Food Story

As more of us swallow pills to cover dietary lapses, new research suggests our money is better spent on hero vegetables, nutritionist

- Jennifer Bowden

Good news about the health benefits of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower just keeps on coming.

But, as for the supplements we’re increasingly swallowing in the hope they will make up for our dietary lapses, new research suggests they may be doing more harm than good.

If you’re taking multivitamin, vitamin C and D, beta-carotene, calcium and selenium supplements for heart health or to increase your life expectancy, you’re wasting your time and money. In fact, if taken in combination with statins, antioxidant mixtures and niacin, you’re in danger of shortening your life.

This analysis comes from a systematic review of randomised control trials (the gold standard for proving causation), published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in June. It concluded that evidence of the beneficial effects of dietary supplements across all dietary backgrounds wasn’t demonstrated and that current research on supplement use reinforced advice to eat a healthy diet with plenty of plant foods in which many of these vitamins and minerals are found.

The same message can be applied to cancer prevention. The World Cancer Research Fund’s 2018 report, “Diet, Nutrition, Physical Activity and Cancer: a Global Perspective”, reinforces advice to ignore supplements to prevent cancer and to meet nutritional needs through diet alone. The report is the third comprehensive analysis since 1997 of worldwide research on cancer prevention. It notes there is strong evidence that certain supplements can be harmful to health – for instance, high-dose betacarotene supplements can increase the risk of lung cancer in some people.

An earlier review, by British medical research charity Cochrane, found that vitamin E and vitamin A supplements may also be extremely harmful.