Horizon

Do you do one thing every morning for your health,

like millions of other people?

No, I don't mean brushing your teeth.

I mean take vitamin pills.

I'll tell you now - I don't take any vitamins.

But I want to find out if I should.

And if I did, what would they do for me?

I'm Dr Giles Yeo.

As a scientist, I investigate our genes,

our diet and our health.

I want to find out if the vitamins, minerals, botanical supplements

are all that they appear to be.

I'll try to find out what supplements are actually doing

for our health,

by digging deeper than the eye-catching words

on the packaging.

For a lot of people, it'll not do what it says on the tin.

I'll put our diets to the test...

Oh, my God!

..to discover who really needs a supplement.

Those curly fries gave her almost 50% of her daily folate.

And I'll investigate if antioxidant vitamins -

A, C and E - are really the miracle for our health

that we've been promised.

If we can take antioxidants, we can prolong the life.

We can stop the diseases from appearing.

At least, that was the theory.

And how science may now be revealing what antioxidant supplements

could actually be doing to us.

In the Olympic centres worldwide, this topic was heavily debated.

And then some of the centres even totally removed antioxidants

from their training schedule.

Is it time we took a really rigorous, scientific approach

to these everyday miracle pills?

Supplements are sold on high streets everywhere.

The industry is worth more than £400 million

in this country alone.

You can buy them over there.

You can buy them over there.

You can even buy them back there.

Nearly half of us take a vitamin or mineral supplement every day.

How did this come to be?

The story begins more than 130 years ago

at a Dutch Army research institute in Indonesia.

In the 19th century, there were these mysterious diseases

that weren't caused by drugs.

One was rickets.

Another was scurvy.

And then there was beriberi, which can damage the nervous system

or lead to heart failure.

So by the 1880s, beriberi had become endemic

in the Dutch colonies in Indonesia.

And people just did not know what was causing it.

One man was doing his best to solve the mystery.

There was a doctor, Christiaan Eijkman, who thought that it was

a bacteria causing the disease

and he was trying to find out what this bacteria was.

The only cause of disease Eijkman knew of at the time was infection.

And then something happened to change his mind.

There were chickens who were getting sick,

and it seemed to have something to do with their diet.

Now, the men who fed the chickens told Doctor Eijkman

that when the chickens were ill, he was feeding them white rice.

But when he went back to feeding them unpolished brown rice,

the chickens recovered.

It turned out the skin of the brown rice contained

what Dr Eijkman called the anti-beriberi factor,

which ended up becoming known as vital amine,

or vitamin.

The big discovery was diseases could be caused by being deficient

in vitamins and minerals, found mostly in food.

Blindness can be caused by a lack of vitamin A.

Our bodies turn the beta-carotene in carrots into vitamin A.

Now, birth defects can be caused by a lack of B9,

otherwise known as folate, which can be found in avocados.

Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C,

which can be found in oranges.

Now, lack of vitamin D can then cause rickets.

Now, you can get vitamin D from cheese, from eggs -

but mostly, we get it from the sun.

Now, a lack of iron can cause anaemia.

And iron can be found in meat.

And you can find loads of zinc in beans.

Once vitamins were discovered in food, enterprising chemists

soon made them into pills.

And a new industry was born.

Vitamin and mineral supplements to be taken in addition to food.

What might buying these products do for us?

I want to know what vitamins and minerals

we're getting from our food,

and who might need a supplement.

I'm meeting a nutrition scientist here at Greenwich University

to help me find out.

The key evidence showing whether we're getting enough

vitamins and minerals, known as micronutrients, from food

is the Government's National diet and nutrition survey.

Horizon has recruited a group of volunteers

to help illustrate its findings.

One of the "volunteers" is me.

We know only just over a quarter of adults are eating five fruit

and veg a day, which the Government recommends we get as part

of a healthy, balanced diet.

And I suspect I'm not one of them.

Hello. Hi. Hello.

I'm Giles. Hannah? Hello. Hi.

Are you Tatiana?

I want to know how diets that include different amounts

of fruit and veg might affect the amount of micronutrients we get.

Julia is a student who doesn't have much time or money

to spend on cooking.

Now, are you a food as fuel human being,

or do you say you love your food?

I love my food. I'm a massive foodie. OK.

But a lot of my food consists of chocolate!

So, Hannah - how about you?

Tell me about yourself and don't make me feel bad about me.

So, I am yoga teacher. Oh, my God!

I'm now getting the idea of what's going on.

On the one hand, yes, food is fuel for me.

But if I eat badly, by which I mean, if I don't eat a lot

of fruit and vegetables,

if I eat a lot of processed foods,

for me, I feel a massive dip in my energy levels,

in my mood.

I guess, I would like to think that I am somewhere in the middle.

I mean, I think I eat healthily when I cook because I know what goes

in and I do know how to cook.

But in situations when I get back late, or a Friday night,

sometimes on the weekends - then I end up buying

and having takeaways.

Dinner presentation - not my strength.

Here's what the three of us typically eat.

Hannah normally gets five fruit and veg a day.

I've just got home, making myself a massive salad.

Julie manages perhaps a couple?

Having curly fries, my favourite.

And I reckon I'm about three or four.

Sunday night, and what do we have? Roast beef.

I believe that's the king of all dinners,

probably packed full of vitamins.

Spinach, tomatoes, cucumber, some gherkins,

because I just love them.

This is my go-to snack.

I've got poppadoms, prawn curry.

I've got a peshwari naan, I love peshwari naan.

That is as many vegetables as I can fit in.

Some kind of vegan creation.

I am having Arctic Roll.

Our diets are fairly typical for people our age.

Dr Tatiana Christides has measured levels of six vitamins and minerals

in our blood.

Give us the pain.

I'll start with the happy.

In terms of your vitamin A, you're within the normal range. OK.

Which, actually in the United Kingdom,

most people's blood levels of vitamin A

are in the normal range.

Our blood levels of the other vitamins we tested

were mostly normal, too.

The national diet survey shows that most age groups are getting

close to, or above, the amount of vitamins the Government says

we need to be healthy and to avoid diseases or deficiency from food.

But there is one big exception.

So, Giles, your vitamin D level is actually low.

I am surprised.

The Government survey shows around a fifth of adults in the UK

have low blood levels of vitamin D.

In the autumn and winter when there's less sun,

the Government advises all of us to consider a daily supplement.

So, what about our mineral levels?

If we look at Hannah's bloodwork - when we look at her iron levels,

her iron levels actually are low.

Despite having the healthiest diet of all of us, Hannah is like

nearly half of teenage girls and just over a quarter of women

who get less iron from their diet than the Government recommends.

If you actually turn out to be iron deficient or iron deficient anaemia,

then that is one of the places where you want to take supplements.

And that's a really important point.

The Government recommends children under five are given supplements.

Plus another group...

Pregnant women or women that are thinking of becoming pregnant,

are recommended to increase their folate intake.

And that is 100% supported by the evidence.

We all know we should get five a day as part of a balanced diet

to help us stay healthy,

lowering the risk of heart disease, stroke and some cancers.

But Tatiana wants to show us how the food many of us actually eat,

although often high in salt, sugar, saturated fat and calories,

is not short on micronutrients.

Ah, here's my favourite takeaway.

You get quite a few micronutrients from this.

So you need 40mg of vitamin C, and this gives you 13.

So you see, it's almost a third of your vitamin C

in one of your three meals. Perfect. OK.

You get a lot of fibre in this meal.

You do get some iron, actually.

You get some calcium from that meal.

So really, this is giving you a broad range of micronutrients.

But I think what you'd want to think about is the number of calories.

And what about Julia's curly fries?