Nutrition In a Pill?

I took 3,000 supplements over five months. Here's what happened

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Photographs by Justin Fantl for TIME

Vitamin-C pills don't fall into either category. Instead, they're part of the incredibly popular, poorly regulated world of dietary supplements

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The Licensing Effect
One morning in March, a couple of months into my nutraceutical regimen, I noticed that my jeans were tight. A week later, I went up a notch on my belt. Usana had asked me to keep a health log, and now I looked back. I was 170 lb. (77.1 kg) on Feb. 1, 175 lb. (79.4 kg) by late February and 180 lb. (81.6 kg) on March 30.

I had also been recording my meals. I was eating fine in early February. On Feb. 6, for instance, I had grilled chicken, vegetables and brown rice for dinner, along with pineapple juice. But the following month, there were entries like this one, for March 2: "Burger, a few fries and onion rings." That came after an afternoon chocolate croissant.

Psychologists have a name for my behavior: the licensing effect. (Nutritionists have called it compensation.) The nutraceuticals had made me feel virtuous. Vitamin C? Niacin? Vitamin K? I had plenty. Any nutrient that my body could possibly need would be provided by these pills and powders. So I changed my routine. Other people may have to eat sautéed kale, but I get fries. (An Aug. 2 study published in the journal Addiction shows that the same thing happened with smokers: those who took pills they believed were vitamins — the pills were actually just sugar — smoked significantly more cigarettes afterward than those in a control group.)

It took me three months to lose the weight. In the end, Dixon helped me do it. He emphasized that his company's products should be taken only in concert with a nutritious diet and plenty of exercise, water and sleep. He also sent a cookbook, Low-Glycemic Meals in Minutes; the meals were better than they sound.

Dixon was always a meticulous scientist, but then I thought about how most Usana products are sold, through networks of nonexperts, all those homemakers trying to get on the Wall of Fame. Would they be as scrupulous about recommending Usana products only as an adjunct to a healthy diet?

Some doctors worry that nutraceutical enthusiasts will come to believe that if a little vitamin help is good, more will be better. Vitamin overdose is rare, although Dr. Eduardo Marbán, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, has found that extreme doses of antioxidants can cause genetic mutations in stem cells. He says he virtually never recommends supplements. "I think a normal diet would suffice in every case that I know of," he told me. "And I'm worried about the little old lady who takes 20 vitamin pills a day." Marbán's deep skepticism about nutraceuticals has a long history in the medical community. In the 1940s, Dr. Ernst Boas, a famous Columbia University cardiologist, called the vitamin business "the damnedest racket ever perpetrated upon the public."

That's going a bit far — but the aura of snake oil persuaded me, eventually, to toss my remaining pills and fiber powder (although I think Usana's Nutrimeal shakes are a delicious breakfast). People ask me all the time, Did I feel different when I was taking the pills? Do I feel different now that I have stopped?

I don't wake up now with that feeling of the lion who will eat the world. But I make better food choices. On nutraceuticals, I had come to believe that health could be a set of tablets to take rather than a series of responsibilities to meet — water instead of soda, an apple instead of chips, real fish instead of a giant fish-oil capsule. You can take vitamins on the faith that they will make you better — and if you have a real vitamin deficiency, they will. But there's more science behind another way of getting your vitamins: eating right.

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