According to a newly released study, most children who take vitamins don’t really need them. On the other hand, kids who eat poorly and are most likely to benefit from nutritional supplements rarely get them. The results surprised researchers, as they were expecting to find that people who use mineral and vitamin supplements might be using them to cushion the effects of poor nutrition, but they actually found the opposite.

The kids who used supplements the most were those who already drank a lot of milk, ate a lot of fiber and didn’t consume much fat or cholesterol. In conclusion, they were healthier overall and tended to be white, have health insurance and come from upper-income families. Furthermore, they also get a lot of exercise, aren’t overweight and don’t watch too much TV or spend a lot of time playing video games.

The study was published in today’s issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, and researchers derived the information from an analysis of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey results from 1999 to 2004. They found that approximately one-third of American children ages 2 to 17 had used a vitamin or mineral supplement within the previous month, but most of the cases they did not need that.

As previously mentioned, children who used vitamins the least tended to be at greatest risk for nutritional deficits, as they did not eat as well as the children who were taking vitamins. They lived in low-income families that were short of food and had less access to health care. It’s a disturbing fact, because if the situation would have been the other way around, it would have been much better. Poverty seems to have been the overriding factor, as parent who were poor were perhaps unable to afford supplements.

A general analysis of the researchers shows that children who eat a varied diet do not need to take vitamins or other supplements, and the American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend supplement use for children over a year who have a healthy diet. However, vitamins and supplements are recommended for children with chronic illnesses or eating disorders and for obese children trying to lose weight, and that’s because it would help both categories solve their health issues more quickly.

The Center for Responsible Nutrition has been lobbying to get vitamins and mineral supplementation covered by the food stamp program and Women Infants Children (WIC), and that’s because this would mean poor children will get the medication they need. It’s interesting to see if measures will be adopted in order to stop this phenomenon, and that’s because it’s clearly not a good one.