While walking home with groceries last week, I got to thinking about vitamin supplements. As usual I’d forgotten to even acquire mine, let alone take them.

I recollect those mornings when Mom came at me with the vitamins. I had no problem ingesting, but then I’d burp up that yucky taste/smell most of the morning. It made me wonder why I was taking them. We ate well. My parents didn’t restrict calories but they did limit sweets. If we weren’t getting everything we needed from our food, then who was?

I became vitamin-resistant. I still am. I have them around, generic multi-vitamins for women over 50, but most nights I forget to take one (if I remember I take it with dinner, and then I don’t have the burping situation). And I try to stock calcium too (with vitamin D). My doctor told me to take calcium after he saw the beginning of some spinal arthritis on an X-ray. I intend to take the calcium in the morning and the multi-vitamin at night, kind of.

I just read a medical blip in Diabetes Forecast magazine. Researchers are now finding an increased risk of heart attack in folks taking calcium supplements (without vitamin D). I wonder if this finding is connected with the latest expensive cardiac tests that measure arterial calcium and find it to be indicative of trouble? But I wonder more: why do healthy people take supplements? Think about the word. Supplement. What needs supplementing? I’m not talking about individuals with chronic illness; their conditions may require supplementation.

But what about healthy folks? Why should a functional person, with adequate food resources, require any supplements?

I can think of at least two reasons not to take them. For one thing, science isn’t perfect. I’m pretty sure that the good things don’t work best in isolation but in synergy with other elements, the way they exist in foods and not in pills.

And manufacturing isn’t perfect either. I shudder when I imagine all the mistakes on the factory floor. (People who take piles of supplements, trusting pharma, remind me of those who don’t object to infringements on liberties in the name of security – who argue that if you don’t do wrong you have nothing to fear from surveillance. Excuse me? That’s only true if you inhabit your police world with nothing but perfect, ethical cops!)

If you need supplementing, please do it yourself.