Supplement · Vitamins
Multivitamin
Broad 'insurance' with little outcome benefit in well-fed people, but low risk.
- Evidence
- Silver· human data
- Sources cited
- 1
- Last reviewed
- 22 July 2026
A multivitamin provides small amounts of many micronutrients as broad nutritional 'insurance'. For people already eating a reasonably varied diet, large trials have found little benefit to hard outcomes like heart disease, cancer or mortality.
That said, they are low-risk and can help fill genuine gaps: for restrictive diets, certain life stages, or erratic eating. The better strategy is usually a good diet plus targeted correction of any tested shortfall, rather than relying on a multivitamin to do the work.