The Vitamin Bandwaggon

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 211, 9 July 1943, Page 10

The Vitamin Bandwaggon

| ¢ Written for "The Listener’ by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist to the

Department of Health)

"Tie who cry up the merits of to the exclusion of other constituents of the diet take the risk of leaving the dietary unbalanced. People are very prone to seize on one thing to emphasise instead of looking at the dietary as a whole. Varying the foods that we eat is not only an instinctive habit, but also a safeguard to assure a supply of all the nutrients that are essential. The present "vitamania" is the outcome of a distorted view of our nutri+ tional needs. People who read an advertisement will pick on the vitamin that is advertised regardless of the other food elements which are as likely to be lacking in their dietary. Those who live in the "twilight zone of nutrition" would do better to get out of it into the daylight zone by choosing better foods, not by making up one element alone. The Food Conference recently held at Hot Springs reported that "while strongly advocating sufficient vitamins, they frowned on indiscriminate distribution of synthetic vitamins." The Food and Nutrition Council of the American Medical Association have been equally emphatic. On the question of the issue of vitamins to industrial workers, their answer was "No!" They recommended that "vitamins in pharmaceutical form, essential as they sometimes are, should not be given indiscriminately, but that they be administered only under the advice of a physician." They expressed the belief that "the worker, like every other presumably robust person, should secure his vitamins and minerals not from the pharmacist, but from the grocer, the greengrocer, and the dairyman." The only thing which we are unable to get in sufficient amounts from foods is vitamin D, present in cod liver oil. Food Better Than Pills It is not simply the fact that one nutritional deficiency is likely to be attended by another-for they rarely occur alone (except in the case of a carefully. planned experiment in the laboratory)but there is the additional uncertainty about upsetting the balance. For example, certain cases of pellagra (due to shortage of nicotinic acid) having been treated by physicians with nicotinic acid alone, have promptly shown signs of deficiency of riboflavin (another member of the vitamin B group). About these interactions of one nutrient upon another we do not yet know very much. In the meantime, therefore, food is better than pills. This advice must at the same time be coupled with the information that, in doctors’ hands, vitamin preparations, properly used, have been of great value; for example, in U.S.A. some of the pellagrins suffering from the dementia of this disease and confined to mental hospitals, have regained their mental health. Others whose eyes hurt so badly through lack of riboflavin that they could not read, have been relieved by riboflavin. But after all, prevention is better than cure; brown bread, milk, potatoes and other wholesome foods will do the prevention, \