CHAPTER 14
Over 51 Health Myths
Keeping Americans So Sick
1. Vitamin Euphoria—A Shot In The Dark
itamins seem to be good for everything. The newborn needs them to grow; women take them to be
happy; men use them to maintain or increase potency; athletes ingest them to stay fit; and older
people take them to become younger or to avoid the flu. Even foods are categorized into good and bad,
depending on how many vitamins they contain. Ever since vitamins were produced synthetically, they
were made available in every drugstore or health shop around the world. An estimated 80 million to 160
million people take antioxidants in North America and Europe, about 10 to 20 percent of adults. In 2006,
Americans spent $2.3 billion on nutritional supplements and vitamins at grocery stores, drug stores and
retail outlets, excluding Wal-Mart, according to Information Resources Inc., which tracks sales.
To stay healthy, you don’t have to eat all that vitamin-rich food anymore. Just pop in a couple of those
colorful vitamin pills a day and your health is taken care of, or so the ad slogans tell you. But if you don’t
pay heed to this “common-sense” advice, doctors tell you that you may become vitamin deficient and put
your health at risk.
And so we act obediently, out of fear of risking our lives. If you feel tired or suffer from lack of
concentration (which could be due to lack of sleep or overeating), you may be prescribed vitamin B pills.
Then there is vitamin C if you catch a cold (which could result from stress, working too hard or eating too
much junk food). Vitamin E, you are told, helps you prevent a heart attack (so you may no longer need to
watch out for the true risk factors of heart disease, as outlined in chapter 9). Accordingly, we spend
billions of dollars on vitamin pills each year to fight off every kind of ill from the common cold to cancer.
Nowadays, artificial vitamins are added to almost every processed food—not because they are so good
for you, but because foods that are “enriched” sell better. Cereals, bread, milk, yoghurt, boiled sweets
(hard candy), even dog food with added vitamins leave the supermarket shelves much faster than foods
without them. Smokers, meat eaters, sugar addicts and people who drink too much alcohol can now
continue enjoying their self-destructing habits without having to fear the dreaded vitamin deficiency,
thanks to the blessed food industry. The magic food supplements have become an insurance policy
against poor diet, and nobody has to feel guilty anymore over eating junk food. And to top it off, scientific
research (financed by the vitamin producers) suggests that taking large doses of supplements may protect
you against disease, even though there is no real evidence to support that claim. As seen in the sales
figures, the public believes that the more vitamins you take, the healthier you become.
But are vitamins really that good for your health? Despite the massive amounts of vitamins consumed
in modern societies, overall health is declining everywhere, except in those countries that still rely mostly
on fresh-farmed foods. Could the mass consumption of vitamins be even co-responsible for this trend?
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