Last year, researchers published new findings from the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term study of more than 160000 midlife

Last year, researchers published new findings from the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term study of more than 160000 midlife women. The data showed that multivitamin-takers are no healthier than those who don’t take the pills, at least when it comes to the big diseases-cancer, heart disease, and stroke "Even women with poor diets weren’t helped by taking a multivitamin," says study author Marian Neuhouser, PhD, in the cancer prevention program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle.
     Vitamin supplements came into fashion in the early 1900s, when it was difficult or impossible for most people to get a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables year-round. Back then, vitamin deficiency diseases weren’t unheard-of: the bowed legs and confusion ribs caused by a severe shortage of vitamin D, or the skin problems and mental confusion caused by a lack of vitamin B.
     But these days, you’re extremely unlikely to be seriously deficient if you eat an average American diet, if only because many packaged foods are vitamin-enriched. Sure, most of us could do with a couple more daily servings of produce，but a multi doesn’t do a good job at substituting for those . "Multi vitamins have maybe two dozen ingredients--but plants have hundreds of other useful compounds," Neuhouser says. " If you just take a multivitamin，you’re missing lots of compounds that may be providing benefits."
      That said there is one group that probably ought to keep taking a multi-vitamin: women of reproductive age. The supplement is insurance in case of pregnancy. A woman who gets adequate amounts of the B vitamin is much less likely to have a baby with a birth defect.