The $60 billion aisle with a one-page evidence file
Most supplements sold have no demonstrated benefit for the people buying them. The exceptions are knowable.
By The Weekend · · 2 min read
The global supplement industry turns over well north of a hundred billion dollars a year; the short list of products with solid evidence for healthy adults would fit on an index card. The gap between those two facts is one of consumer capitalism's most durable achievements.
What the evidence says
For the general population, large trials and meta-analyses keep returning the same verdicts: multivitamins do not reduce mortality or major disease in nourished adults; antioxidant megadoses have repeatedly failed and occasionally harmed. The defensible card reads roughly: vitamin D for the deficient and sun-starved, B12 for many vegans and older adults, folate in pregnancy, iron when tested low, creatine for strength training, omega-3s in specific cardiac contexts. Deficiency, pregnancy, training — patterns, not lifestyle.
Who funded it
The category's structural advantage is regulatory: in most markets supplements are policed like foods, not drugs — no efficacy proof required before sale, claims fenced only by careful wording. "Supports immune health" is a sentence engineered to survive lawyers, not trials. Independent testing also regularly finds dosing that doesn't match labels, which is its own review of the aisle.
The numbers a reader can feel
A typical multivitamin habit runs real money per year to move numbers that, for most buyers, were never tested and never low. The same spend covers a lot of lentils, sardines and sunlight — sources with the inconvenient property of demonstrated benefit.
What happens next
Personalised-supplement subscriptions are the category's growth story — the quiz is the product. The evidence-based posture stays dull: test, don't guess; treat deficiencies; eat the boring foods. The aisle is betting you find that unsatisfying, and the aisle's revenue says the bet keeps paying.