Your Multivitamin Won't Save You

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dietary supplements — the vitamins, herbs and botanicals that you'll find in most grocery stores — are everywhere. More than half of U.S. adults over 20 take them, spending almost $50 billion on vitamins and other supplements in 2021. Yet decades of research have produced little evidence that they really work. Aaron Scott talks to Dr. Jenny Jia about the science of dietary supplements: which ones might help, which ones might hurt, and where we could be spending our money instead.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:06.3	Hey there, short waivers.
0:07.3	Aaron Scott here.
0:08.6	And if you're anything like me, you might begin your day by chasing down your breakfast
0:13.9	with a small alphabet of vitamins and other supplements.
0:21.7	More Americans are taking dietary supplements.
0:24.3	Americans love their supplements.
0:26.3	HLs, tablets, liquids, it's a giant industry on the rise.
0:31.0	After all, Americans spent nearly $50 billion dollars alone on supplements last year.
0:38.8	The supplement industry is booming.
0:41.7	More than half of U.S. adults over 20 take them.
0:45.8	And there are all sorts of claims about how vitamin X will cure Y or mineral Z will prevent
0:52.3	any number of bad things from happening to you.
0:55.4	But is there anyone who's actually reviewing these claims to see whether these little
1:00.2	pills do what they promise?
1:02.8	These supplements are not regulated as pharmaceutical medications.
1:07.0	They're regulated as food.
1:08.2	And so I think there's just sort of a lower burden for proving effectiveness and it makes
1:12.8	it sort of easier than to also market them because they can sometimes make claims that
1:17.8	just can't be proven really.
1:19.5	This is Dr. Jenny Jha, a researcher and instructor at Northwestern University's Fineberg School
1:24.8	of Medicine.
	...

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