Synopses & Reviews
"[A] hidden, many-faceted, and urgent story... a commanding, meticulously documented, and riling exposé rich in dramatic and absurd science and advertising history, lively profiles, and intrepid, eyebrow-raising fieldwork" --Booklist (STARRED)
The startling story of Americas devotion to vitaminsand how it keeps us from good health
Health-conscious Americans seek out vitamins any way they can, whether in a morning glass of orange juice, a piece of vitamin-enriched bread, or a daily multivitamin. We believe that vitamins are always beneficial and that the more we can get, the betterand yet despite this familiarity, few of us could explain what vitamins actually are. Instead, we outsource our questions to experts and interpret vitamin” as shorthand for health.”
What we dont realizeand what Vitamania revealsis that the experts themselves are surprisingly short on answers. Yes, we need vitamins; without them, we would die. Yet despite a century of scientific research (the word vitamin” was coined only in 1912), there is little consensus around even the simplest of questions, whether its exactly how much we each require or what these thirteen dietary chemicals actually do.
The one thing that experts do agree upon is that the best way to get our nutrients is in the foods that naturally contain them, which have countless chemicals beyond vitamins that may be beneficial. But thanks to our love of processed foods (whose natural vitamins and other chemicals have often been removed or destroyed), this is exactly what most of us are not doing. Instead, we allow marketers to use the addition of synthetic vitamins to blind us to what else in food we might be missing, leading us to accept as healthy products that we might (and should) otherwise reject.
Grounded in historybut firmly oriented toward the futureVitamania reveals the surprising story of how our embrace of vitamins led to todays Wild West of dietary supplements and investigates the complicated psychological relationship weve developed with these thirteen mysterious chemicals. In so doing, Vitamania both demolishes many of our societys most cherished myths about nutrition and challenges us to reevaluate our own beliefs.
Impressively researched, counterintuitive, and engaging, Vitamania wont just change the way you think about vitamins. It will change the way you think about food.
Review
Booklist (STARRED) "Price thought she knew a fair amount about vitamins, given her carefully monitored diet to control her type
1 diabetes and her focus on nutrition and health as an award-winning science journalist. But once she
began researching the facts about the 13 vitamins that keep us alive, she realized that there was a hidden,
many-faceted, and urgent story to tell. The result is a commanding, meticulously documented, and riling
exposé rich in dramatic and absurd science and advertising history, lively profiles, and intrepid, eyebrowraising
fieldwork. Multivitamins first appeared in the 1930s, followed by, as Price so strikingly discloses,
boldly calculating proselytizing, which launched our “obsession with nutritional shortcuts” and led to our
dependency on the synthetic vitamins that fortify processed foods. There is still so much we dont
understand about how we process vitamins, our recommended dietary allowances are merely
improvisations. And forget about vitamin megadoses. Price also recounts, with teeth-gritting detail, the
ferocious lobbying efforts, and public complacency, responsible for the FDAs failure to regulate the
safety and efficacy of the multibillion-dollar vitamin and dietary supplement industry. Prices sharp wit,
skillful and vivid translation of science into story, and valiant inquisitiveness (she insists on tasting
synthetic vitamins and gets buzzed on the militarys caffeinated meat sticks) make for an electrifying
dissection of our vitamin habit in contrast to our irrevocable need for naturally nutrient-rich food."
Review
Outside Magazine:
“Catherine Price traces the long history of Americas love affair with vitamins… her chilling research about the barely regulated supplements marketplace will likely have you rethinking your morning multivitamin.”
Library Journal:
“Entertaining and informative…An excellent addition to collections in public and consumer health libraries.”
Booklist (starred review):
“A commanding, meticulously documented, and riling exposé rich in dramatic and absurd science and advertising history, lively profiles, and intrepid, eyebrowraising fieldwork…. Prices sharp wit, skillful and vivid translation of science into story, and valiant inquisitiveness (she insists on tasting synthetic vitamins and gets buzzed on the militarys caffeinated meat sticks) make for an electrifying dissection of our vitamin habit in contrast to our irrevocable need for naturally nutrient-rich food.”
MARION NESTLE, Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies,and Public Health at New York University; author of What to Eat
“Catherine Price gives us a journalists entertaining romp through the fascinating history of the discovery of vitamins and their use and marketing as objects of health obsession. Faith in vitamins, she advises, should be tempered by scientific uncertainty and dietary complexity and the understanding that foods are better sources than pills.”
MICHELE SIMON, author of Appetite for Profit
“Vitamania is a much-needed critique of the nations obsession with nutritional supplements. Price exposes the less-than-scientific roots of what has become a multibillion-dollar industry, along with the inadequate regulatory oversight that drives unsavory marketing practices. The book concludes with this refreshing advice: get your nutrition from eating real food.”
EMILY OSTER, author of Expecting Better
“This is a fascinating look at what we know—and mostly what we dont —about vitamins. Youll never look at a bottle of multivitamins the same way again.”
Synopsis
"Measured, funny, and fascinating... If you need vitamins to survive (you do), you should read this book."Scientific American ("Food Matters")
Most of us know nothing about vitamins. What s more, what we think we know is harming both our personal nutrition and our national health. By focusing on vitamins at the expense of everything else, we ve become blind to the bigger picture: despite our belief that vitamins are an absolute good and the more of them, the better vitamins are actually small and surprisingly mysterious pieces of a much larger nutritional puzzle. In Vitamania, award-winning journalist Catherine Price offers a lucid and lively journey through our cherished yet misguided beliefs about vitamins, and reveals a straightforward, blessedly anxiety-free path to enjoyable eating and good health.
When vitamins were discovered a mere century ago, they changed the destiny of the human species by preventing and curing many terrifying diseases. Yet it wasn t long before vitamins spread from labs of scientists into the realm of food marketers and began to take on a life of their own. By the end of the Second World War, vitamins were available in forms never before seen in nature vitamin gum, vitamin doughnuts, even vitamin beer and their success showed food manufacturers that adding synthetic vitamins to otherwise nutritionally empty products could convince consumers that they were healthy. The era of vitamania, as one 1940s journalist called it, had begun.
Though we ve gained much from our embrace of vitamins, what we ve lost is a crucial sense of perspective. Vitamins may be essential to our lives, but they are not the only important substances in food. By buying into a century of hype and advertising, we have accepted the false idea that particular dietary chemicals can be used as shortcuts to health whether they be antioxidants or omega-3s or, yes, vitamins. And it s our vitamin-inspired desire for effortless shortcuts that created today s dietary supplement industry, a veritable Wild West of overpromising miracle substances that can be legally sold without any proof that they are effective or safe.
For the countless individuals seeking to maximize their health and who consider vitamins to be the keys to well-being, Price s
Vitamania will be a game-changing look into the roots of America s ongoing nutritional confusion. Her travels to vitamin manufacturers and food laboratories and military testing kitchens along with her deep dive into the history of nutritional science provide a witty and dynamic narrative arc that binds
Vitamania together. The result is a page-turning exploration of the history, science, hype, and future of nutrition. And her ultimate message is both inspiring and straightforward: given all that we don t know about vitamins and nutrition, the best way to decide what to eat is to stop obsessing and simply embrace this uncertainty head-on.
By exposing our extraordinary psychological relationship with vitamins and challenging us to question our beliefs,
Vitamania won t just change the way we think about vitamins. It will change the way we think about food.
Booklist, *STARRED*
"A hidden, many-faceted, and urgent story."
Wall Street Journal
"The baselessness of our hopes for various elixirs, alongside our baseless fear of science s true achievements, opens up a rich vein of hypocrisy that Ms. Price mines with engaging relish."
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About the Author
Catherine Price is an award-winning journalist whose written and multimedia work has appeared in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, O: The Oprah Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Men's Journal, Mother Jones, PARADE, Health Magazine, and Outside. Price lives in Philadelphia.