That’s the question that has sparked a good deal of debate lately.  One group of researchers announced that there is no evidence to support the popular belief.  They also say taking common antioxidant supplements may even hasten death and have issued the call for increased regulation of the burgeoning nutraceuticals industry.  Another group says the wrong data was studied when reaching those conclusions.

Researchers led by Christian Gluud, MD, conducted a meta-analysis involving more than 200,000 people participating in 67 randomized studies.  The studies that were reviewed involved only healthy adults or adults diagnosed with a specific set of medical conditions but who had achieved a level of stability with their condition.  Studies involving children, pregnant women, people with nutrient deficiencies, and participants in studies conducted to evaluate the benefit of nutritional supplementation on acute diseases like malignant cancer were all excluded from the meta-analysis.

The Gluud research team found that antioxidant supplementation did not prolong life and, when vitamins A, E, and beta-carotene were consumed, death might have occurred even sooner than expected.  Gluud is director of medical science, department head, and associate professor of the Copenhagen Trial Unit for the Centre for Clinical Intervention Research and the Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.  He challenges officials to regulate the nutraceutical industry without becoming influenced by their financial incentives.

Gluud claims a healthy diet based on fruits and vegetables will supply all the nutrients necessary for a healthy life although these are the foods many people avoid.  He also questions the marketing of antioxidant supplements as a means of counteracting the tissue damage caused by oxygen.

On the other hand, Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, claims the Gluud review team oversteps its boundaries with regard to recommendations for stricter regulatory control.  Blumberg, not involved with Gluud’s meta-analysis, is a professor at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and director of the Antioxidants Research Laboratory, a part of the US Department of Agriculture’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging.  He claims the review omits review and evaluation of current regulatory practices and standards.

Andrew Shao, PhD, and vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the supplemental industry’s trade association, Council for Responsible Nutrition, in Washington, DC, is concerned over the selection process used by Gluud’s team to choose studies for their review and he questions the review’s conclusions.

One of Shao’s concerns is that Gluud’s review involved only studies in which one or more study participants died, although they could have died from any reason, including a train wreck.  Shao cites 405 studies where no deaths occurred but they were all excluded from Gluud’s review.  Including them would have likely led to different conclusions.

Both Blumberg and Shao stand by the value of antioxidants as nutritional supplements to an otherwise healthy diet.

Gluud’s review can be found in The Cochrane Library, published by The Cochrane Collaboration, a multinational organization chartered to evaluate medical research using systematic methods to draw conclusions based on the evidence found therein.  Their evaluations consider content as well as the quality of existing medical trials.