The Average Consumer and Expensive Daily Vitamins

The Average Consumer and Expensive Daily Vitamins:

A Financial Decision

Hunter Hoeptner

Southern Oregon University

USEM 103

March 6, 2016

The Average Consumer and Expensive Daily Vitamins: A Financial Decision

Many consumers throughout the world use multivitamins and supplements on a daily basis. Many vitamin commercials that are seen every day can be extremely misleading. These misleading commercials are put out by companies that don’t necessarily care about the health of their clients. Many companies mislabel their products and greatly alter their nutrition statements. I believe that this negatively and dramatically affects the consumer.

According to an article written in 2007 by Peter Greenwald, Darrell Anderson, Stefanie A Nelson, and Philip R Taylor and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition vol. 85 p.3145-3175, “Approximately 20–30% of Americans consume multivitamin supplements daily” and according to an article published on the Huffington post in 2011, “almost 50% of Americans take vitamins or other dietary supplements. (Stobbe M.). These statistics show that the reliability and factuality of a product and it’s packaging relates to nearly 50% of the American population and is an obvious concern.

A study by Bubes, V. Sesso, H. Christen, W. Smith, J. in 2012 on multivitamins discovers whether or not multivitamins can prevent cardiovascular disease in men. This is an extensive and long-term study that takes 14,641 men over the course of 14 years and either has them take a placebo or a multivitamin daily. These men range from 50 years old and up. Of these 14,641 men, 754 of them had a history of cardiovascular disease or CVD. The study found that during the almost 14 year trial, 1732 major cardiovascular events occurred. These cardiovascular events included non-fatal myocardial infraction, nonfatal stroke, and death. Compared to the placebo, those taking the multivitamin experienced no more cardiovascular events, and it made no difference in those with CVD history. In this study of multivitamins in the prevention of cardiovascular disease in men, the official conclusion was “Among this population of US male physicians, taking a daily multivitamin did not reduce major cardiovascular events, MI, stroke, and CVD mortality after more than a decade of treatment and follow-up.” (Bubes, V. Sesso, H. Christen, W. Smith, J. (2012). This study shows that multivitamins do not help prevent CVD in men, and is the first step in deciding whether purchasing vitamins for daily usage is worth the endeavor. Many Americans take supplements and multi-vitamins in order to suppress symptoms of some oncoming cold, or in order to hold off the attackers of some sort of flu, virus, or even certain diseases. This shows that multi-vitamins are not as preventative as many think.