Vitamin Poppers May Make Less Healthful Choices
It can be tough to keep up with dietary trends. Like eating eggs: good for you or bad? But one thing is certain. Taking a multivitamin is a healthy choice. Isn’t it? Not necessarily. Because researchers have found that people who take dietary supplements may make less healthful choices. The work appears in the journal Psychological Science . [Wen-Bin Chiou and Chao-Chin Yang, Ironic Effects of Dietary Supplementation: Illusory Invulnerability Created by Taking Dietary Supplements Licenses Health-risk Behaviors, link to come]
Half the population uses some sort of dietary supplement, and that figure is on the rise. Yet we don’t seem to be getting any healthier. So researchers took a closer look at how people who pop health pills actually behave. One group of volunteers was asked to take a dietary supplement, the other group was told they were getting a placebo. In fact, both groups received dummy pills. But it turns out that subjects who thought they’d taken a supplement made less healthy choices, opting for the buffet instead of an organic meal and walking less than their supplement-deprived pals.
