HANDFUL OF HOPE
Nowhere are New Zealanders’ conflicted attitudes to vitamin supplements better illustrated than in the Dunedin home of Dr Lisa Houghton, a professor of nutrition at the University of Otago, and her accountant husband Brett Dailey.
Ask Houghton whether it’s a good idea to take multivitamins and she’ll tell you the people who need them least are those who take them most; that we get the critical nutrients we need from our food. Apart from taking iron when she was younger, she doesn’t use them. Then she laughs and adds, “But my husband loves them.” Dailey, she says, has given each of their three daughters, now in their teens and early twenties, a multivitamin tablet each day since they were preschoolers.
All five have been vegetarians for several years and oldest daughter Erin is trying veganism, but Houghton, who does most of the cooking, ensures they get healthy, balanced meals. But Dailey says even before they moved to a plant-based diet, he offered multivitamins as a kind of dietary insurance policy. “From a young age, they had the chewable tablets and we just kept up with it the whole time. I always felt diet can’t be perfect every day, that’s for sure.” He says Houghton “doesn’t tell me not to do it, but sometimes she rolls her eyes at the supermarket when I’m buying them. I’m just trying to fill a gap.” He says although healthy meals are always available, the girls “don’t always eat everything they should”.
Supplement sales are up 65% on 2015 with multivitamins, worth about $40 million, leading the way.
Dailey accepts that his attitudes are
