Podcasts Other The Inquiry How Did We Get Hooked on Vitamins?

How Did We Get Hooked on Vitamins?

Published: Dec. 27, 2018, 3:30 a.m.

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Millions of us take a vitamin tablet every day - how did they become so popular? We follow the rise and rise of vitamins from their discovery just a century ago, to the multi-billion dollar market of today. The story of how the vitamin supplement entered our daily lives takes us from the targeted guilt-tripping of concerned mothers, to the use of vitamins as a weapon against the Nazis, via a plan for vitamin doughnuts.

Experts question whether most of us need to take them at all \\u2013 so how did we get hooked on vitamins?

Contributors include:

Dr Lisa Rogers \\u2013 World Health Organization \\nCatherine Price \\u2013 Author of Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food\\nDr Salim Al-Gailani - Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge\\nMatthew Oster \\u2013 Head of Consumer Health, Euromonitor International

Presenter: Kavita Puri\\nProducer: Beth Sagar-Fenton

(Photo: a woman shopping at 'Mr Vitamins', a chain of supplement outlets in Sydney, Australia. Credit: Saeed Khan/Getty Images)

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