Go easy on the vitamins

More and more of us are taking food supplements to 'balance' our diets. But are they doing us more harm than good?

Lucy Atkins investigates Tuesday May 22, 2007 The Guardian

They are exculpation, insurance and saintliness in handy pill form. They supposedly guard against anything from wrinkles to cancer. But are dietary supplements - from the humble multi-vitamin to the mega-dose antioxidant - really as benign as they seem?

A study published last week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that men with prostate cancer who took more than seven multivitamins a week were 30% more likely to get an advanced and fatal form of the disease.

This comes after a large - though hotly contested - review published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in February found that people who took antioxidant vitamin tablets (particularly vitamins A and E and beta-carotene) were more likely to die earlier than those who did not. Leia mais aqui