Never ever Gawker ever. Paragraph 1 of the linked editorial, sentence 2 and 3:

"First, Fortmann and colleagues (1) systematically reviewed trial evidence to update the US Preventive Services Task Force recommendation in community dwelling adults with no nutritional deficiencies. After reviewing 3 trials of multivitamin supplements and 24 trials of single or paired vitamins that randomly assigned more than 400,000 participants, the authors concluded that there was no clear evidence of a beneficial effect of supplements on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease or cancer."

This is good, this is valuable. What it says is that if you are getting all the nutrients you need, getting more of them will not prevent heart disease, cancer, or "death."

What it doesn't say is "Scientists say vitamins and minerals are a waste of money."

It doesn't take much - a google search of "prevalence of nutritional deficiency United States" ; try it! - to learn that more than 10% of Americans are nutritionally deficient, according to the CDC. More than 30% of blacks, in fact. So for that cohort, vitamins are probably a pretty good idea.

The studies also say nothing about quality of life - whether iron or b12 will give you energy when you lack it. Whether selenium benefits prostate health. That wasn't the target of the study.

I've worked with wastewater treatment plants. Lemme tell ya - every morning, you see a checkerboard of little half-digested Centrums in amongst the "biosolids." The vitamins you can get over the counter have, if I recall correctly, about a 5% absorption rate. People really do take them as a panacea, as a ward against evil spirits. There's plenty of reason to study whether vitamins are effective broadband against cancer, which is what's happening here. There's ample justification to get the proof that popping a 1-a-day will not counterbalance that pack of American Spirits in your purse.

But that's not the sort of nuance you get from Gawker.

Kinda gives me pause. I mean, I typed "vitamins" into Google and got 39,000 news articles. It's pretty much the health story of the month. Yet here we are.

Giving Gawker hits.