"Slam" dunk
If you saw the report on ABC last month about supplements, the last thing you're probably expecting is me to defend the Harvard School of Public Health physician who "slammed" them. But the fact is, he has a point. Let me back up a bit first, and recap that report for those of you who didn't see it. ABC's medical editor spoke with Harvard's Dr. Eric Rimm about just how critical vitamin supplements really are for human health. And if you just read the headlines of all the other news outlets covering this story, it certainly appears that he considers them useless - - except, of course, for making "expensive urine" (the favorite soundbite of most media outlets that reported on the interview). But if you actually look a bit closer at what Rimm is saying, you find that he's not really anti-supplement at all. He just believes that good health should have its roots in lifestyle choices -- not a supplement bottle. He asserts that there's no substitute for basic good nutrition from fruits, vegetables, lean sources of protein, and that people who reach for a multivitamin to make up for the slack created by the typical American diet are only setting themselves up for eventual health failure. As Rimm put it "A supplement is called a supplement because it's supposed to be supplementing a healthy lifestyle." That's hardly the indictment of vitamin supplements that the mainstream media wanted us to believe. Instead, it's a call for the public to become healthier starting from the ground up, so to speak. And once you've built that healthy foundation, Rimm actually does believe that there's a role for supplements to help fill in any gaps left by produce grown in nutrient-depleted soil, etc. So what was made out to be a "slam" against supplements actually turned out to be the very same valuable health message that Dr. Wright and all of his colleagues in the natural medicine field have been sending out for decades. Just goes to show you how a little reading between the lines can go a long way in uncovering what's REALLY being said… Sources:
"Harvard professor slams supplements," NutraIngredients (www.nutraingredients.com), 7/7/08
"So many vitamins, so little time," ABC News (www.abcnews.com), 7/4/08 | 
