The antioxidant myth is too easy to swallow | Henry Scowcroft

People are hooked on the fallacy that 'antioxidant' is a byword for 'healthy' – perhaps because the truth is less appealingWhen the press release arrived in our inboxes, we knew what would happen next. A controversial Nobel laureate had stated, in a peer-reviewed paper he described as "among my most important work", that antioxidant supplements "may have caused more cancers than they have prevented".Even the most fad-friendly sections of the UK media were bound to cover the story.In reality, Professor James Watson – one of the DNA double-helix's founding fathers – was only restating what we at Cancer Research UK (along with many others) have been pointing out for years. Large studies have repeatedly shown that, with the possible exception of vitamin D, antioxidant supplements have negligible positive effect on healthy people, at least in terms of important things such as preventing people getting cancer or dying prematurely. And some supplements – notably vitamins A, E and beta-carotene – even seem to slightly raise the risk of disease and early death.It's a topic we at Cancer Research UK come back to again and again on our science blog and on our social media pages. But as a quick trawl of Twitter reveals, huge swaths of the public remain convinced that "antioxidant" is a byword for "healthy".This isn't going to be a Goldacresque run-down of study after study of evidence (although here's a handy Cochrane review for the nerds). What's so interesting about the antiox...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Comment Health guardian.co.uk Medical research Food & drink Society Cancer UK news Life and style Science Comment is free Source Type: news