Don’t be too hard on your client for taking this study out of context – that’s the media’s fault. No nutrition scientist would ever stop telling people to take a TRUE COMPLETE 3rd Party tested DAILY multivitamin and mineral (MVM) to fill unavoidable and known nutrition gaps because they all take a real MVM themselves, and it would be irresponsible since everyone has gaps (see the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines report where all Americans are below the RDA on many nutrients and the majority is in dangerous territory on 7 essential nutrients). While virtually everyone is missing multiple nutrients, this graph of data from the USDA tells us how much of the population misses these individual nutrients.
It would be negligent not to use a MVM during calorie restriction (weight/fat loss) and especially during exercise since weight loss diets and calorie restriction exacerbate nutrient insufficiencies.
Finally, if your client wants to roll the dice on living with gaps that we know over time leads to early aging and specific disease (e.g. cognitive, osteoporosis, etc.) that’s their choice. See more info here. When immortality fades, they may think differently and say I wish I had done this since the beginning of time (see facts on prenatal MVM use below).
The study titled “Impact of Frequency of Multi-Vitamin, Multi-Mineral Supplement Intake on Nutritional Adequacy and Nutrient Deficiencies in U.S” regarding filling gaps, is the definitive work on using and recommending a MVM for practitioners such as you – and this is just a minimum reasoning not including weight loss, performance and activity. The long-term result from starting a MVM daily from the womb and throughout life could be amazing.
Have your client read this document on our Multivitamin and Mineral Formulas & ActiveMV as it shows the difference in what you recommend and what this meta-analysis showed, that no one else does.
I’ll leave you with a quote from the real experts (and this comment doesn’t include weight loss and activity – it just refers to everyone):
Q: Why don't Americans get enough nutrients?
Expert answer: “We wouldn’t say that it’s because foods now are nutrient deficient. It’s because we are not eating what we are supposed to eat. There are these dietary guidelines and they are very nice, but no one is following them. To assume that everyone is on an ideal diet is naive and I think in fact irresponsible.”
The above statements were authored in an article by four nutrition experts: Balz Frei PhD, chairman of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, Bruce Ames, PhD, of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Jeffrey Blumberg PhD, of Tufts University and Walter Willett MD, of the Harvard School of Public Health. And yes, they all use a MVM!
More info regarding the flaws in the way people interpret the meta-analysis you’re referring to:
The number one flaw of this study is the endpoint (in the title). NO ONE has ever said a MVM would prevent a heart attack or CVD – but more importantly, the prevention would certainly not happen under these conditions (flawed recall, frequency and formulas). In other words what this report tells us, is that if you are looking to prevent CVD beyond a non-supplemented state, do not do or take what these people did – and as we always say, more proof to stay away from mass market products.
Here’s a list of why this study has little to nothing to do with taking a Practitioner Product (non-mass market) COMPLETE MVM:
- Wrong end point using CVD (here’s the expert nutrition scientist rebuttal)
- The study confirms not to use mass market products due to variability in quality and lack of mandatory testing to verify identiy, composition and purity of supplements
- The study definition of a MVM (totally incomplete and all missing some of the 7 under-consumed nutrients outline in the 2015 DGA report established by actual government surveys. Also, there is no official definition of MVMs, but the US National Institutes of Health defines MVMs as: “any supplement containing 3 or more vitamins and minerals but no herbs, hormones, or drugs. (In our opinion, 3 or more is not a complete formula)
- The frequency of use (basically no one in this study did or could prove frequency since it’s recall surveys and no blood work – so how do you know they took them?). One must always use a MVM daily, which is why we use the term Recommended Daily Allowance – and no one meets these so you don’t skip days as virtually everyone in this meta-analysis did.
- The onset of use (ideally, it’s womb to tomb, but of course no one in this report did that and most probably started when they were not in ideal health, and disease was maybe unknown but taking hold)
Final comment - the success of the prenatal MVM, now a standard recommendation by the American Medical Association & Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, is a stark reminder of the gift of using a complete MVM. This simple act of supplying what food did not, wiped out 35% of major birth defects including spina-bifida and reduced stillborn births by a whopping 55%. As the prenatal taught us about prevention during fetal development, so does filling gaps in all of life post birth to help prevent “adult defects”. A constant supply of what we can use to maximally develop throughout all life phases, rather than what we get from our consumed foods, thus unknown nutrient intake, would extend the work of the prenatal MVM and synergistically build a solid lasting structure as opposed to constantly “robbing Peter to maintain Paul” thus leaving weakened areas of the body now creating problems out of the domain of nutrition and into the domain of disease care and demonstrating the often null effect of vitamin or mineral supplementation as treatment in disease. You can’t go back to your different phases of life and change what already happened later in life and start filing gaps. A classic example of this is bone health as peak bone mass is reached around age 30. After that point, you can't build any more bone. Get the essential nutrients while you can use them to optimize the myriad metabolic processes on a daily basis.