Posted: August 8, 2012

The loyal followers of my blog may recall that two weeks ago I discussed the subject of diet and cancer, citing the work of T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and his book The China Study.  To summarize, Dr. Campbell argued, persuasively I thought, for a vegetarian diet, specifically avoiding animal protein  Not mentioned in that discussion was the dismissive approach Dr. Campbell took to the use of extra vitamins to improve health.  In the last month perhaps the final shoe has dropped on that discussion.  In an important public health journal, The American Journal of Epidemiology,  Dr. Park et al present their recent analysis of the Multicohort Ethnic Study, conducted between 1993 and 1996.  With at least eleven years of follow up from the close of the study, they collected over 182,000 health records to analyze.   They looked at vitamin use, assessed by questionnaire, and found no association between use of multivitamins and the subsequent development of cancer.  The power of the study was in the number of enrollees and the complete absence of a difference in the frequency of cancer based on the number of vitamin pills ingested per week.

+Read more on cancer prevention from Dr. Stark at the BS757 blog.