For most of my life, I pooh-poohed vitamins, believing a healthy person who eats well shouldn’t need supplements. In writing about it, I’ve cited experts who’ve called vitamins and other supplements a waste of money for most people. If you skim the body of scientific research on the topic, you might come to the same conclusion.

A widely reported new study of 390,124 people, for example, concluded that multivitamins don’t do squat for longevity.

That discouraging news follows a comprehensive review of evidence done in 2022, by the US Preventive Services Task Force, which reached this very nonplussed conclusion regarding the effects of vitamins against the leading causes of death: “The current evidence is insufficient to determine the benefits and harms of taking most vitamin, mineral, and multivitamin supplements to prevent heart disease, stroke, and cancer.”

Case closed, right? Eh, not so fast. Two problems:

First, the Task Force analyzed vitamins’ effects only on the leading causes of death; it didn’t consider other physical and mental health conditions. Second, that big new study is not as solid as it sounds, outside experts tell me. I’ll explain below, and we’ll look at some other recent research suggesting benefits to a daily multivitamin.

But before we get in too deep, let’s get the bottom line up front:

If you are young and healthy, you eat well and aren’t aware of any serious vitamin deficiencies, then multivitamins are, at most, more like an insurance policy than a lucrative investment: You can’t expect any obvious or immediate returns, but your protection plan might come in handy, healthwise, in the long run. Whether it’ll pay off depends on genetics, environment, lifestyle, and a host of other factors that are virtually impossible for each of us to discern for ourselves.

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