If you ask them what they can do to stay healthy, most Canadians will eventually say something about taking vitamins.

About 35 per cent of Canadians take a daily multivitamin, and as many as 70 per cent of Americans do the same.

Probe a little deeper, and people will tell you that they take a multivitamin as insurance in case they are not eating a healthy diet — something we have been told most of our lives. You can guess who has been promoting this idea.

What do we know about all this? Presently, Canadians spend about $3 billion a year on vitamin supplements or roughly $75 per person, but this covers the whole population. For the folks taking multivitamins this amounts to about $225 a year. To be fair, this covers a host of supplements beyond vitamins.

Multivitamin pills cost from fou

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