Vitamin Pills vs. Juice

The largest study ever of multivitamin use in older women found they did nothing to prevent common cancers or heart disease.

The Associated Press released an article on February 9, 2009 reporting that a very significant study involving nearly 200,000 participants found that Multivitamins in the pill form do nothing to prevent cancer or heart disease in women or men. The eight-year study in 161,808 postmenopausal women echoes recent disappointing vitamin studies in men.

Millions of Americans spend billions of dollars on vitamins to boost their health. Research has focused on cancer and heart disease in particular because of evidence that diets full of vitamin-rich foods may protect against those illnesses. But that evidence doesn't necessarily mean pills are a good substitute according to the lead author of the study researcher Marian Neuhouser of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.

Alice Lichtenstein, a Tufts University nutrition professor who was not involved in the research, said the study is important because it involved so many women. The study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.
"All the evidence keeps pointing in the same direction," Lichtenstein said. Diets full of vitamin rich whole foods and fruit juices that have had very little processing are highly recommended and preferred by the experts over pills.