[Vitamin and minerals supplements--required for good health?]

Both laymen and the learned are discussing the need for vitamin and minerals supplements and their eventual preventive and therapeutic potential. Documentation is needed, but this word is most of the time used without clarifying the criteria it is based on. In this article we use vitamin E in order to illustrate that there is generally a long way to go from initial hypothesis to eventual practical advice and recommendations. Promising cell and animal studies combined with epidemiological observation studies are not sufficient as evidence; randomised intervention studies are required before conclusions can be drawn. Because high intakes of vitamins and minerals can have negative health effects, we also present the work carried out to decide upper safe intake levels in the Nordic countries, the EU and the USA. Women of fertile age should under certain circumstance take iron and folate supplements, and everyone in Scandinavia should take a supplement with vitamin D. It is sensible and harmless to take a multivitamin and mineral pill for people in risk groups, e.g. people eating very little or have an unbalanced diet (children, old people, patients). Except for these groups it is poorly documented that vitamins and minerals in large doses have a preventive or therapeutic potential. The largest health potential lies in a healthy diet.