Dear Puls editors!

That was probably nonsense that you spread over the airwaves yesterday. “Vitamins & Co. – What they really do” – we would also like to say something about this: with the emphasis on: what they really do.

Ok, we’ll try again. After we published the reaction below in our initial anger, we’ll try the winning way. Seriously, we kept falling off the sofa during your show, it was so unbalanced. As soon as we got up on our feet, the whole living room was shaken and we were back on the floor. In the middle of the program – we swear! – half the TV suddenly went dark from the one-sidedness. Bold, sweeping, biased. There were so many hairs in the soup that there were hardly any vegetables left. No wonder you didn’t like it!

Why is it so popular: the tale of the evil, useless and dangerous vitamin supplements that take money out of people’s pockets? Why is this story told over and over again in the media, even though it has long been proven that vitamins can indeed have a positive effect? What’s so exciting about the little helpers from the world of micronutrients being bashed again and again? What frustration is driving doctors and experts so that they have to denigrate dietary supplements and simply ignore important studies? Unfortunately, we don’t know.

We only observe time and again how vitamins are condemned with relish and against better knowledge and rejected out of hand. Just like by your “checkers” with the colored letters. Usually with the benevolent help of an older doctor or expert who seems to have a mission: “Vitamins are bad. They are unnecessary, even dangerous. If you eat a balanced diet, you don’t need them.” Where is the evidence for these claims? The study that shows this? Why don’t you ask?

In your article, you show the brochure “How well supplied is the Swiss population with micronutrients?” from the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office. You just don’t take note of it. Otherwise you could have shown that the recommended values for vitamin D, folic acid, pantothenic acid, potassium, calcium and iodine are not reached in Switzerland. In the case of women, this also applies to iron. This means that the people concerned have a deficiency. And this has an impact on their health. Not always serious ones, of course. But in total and over time, sometimes they do. This is exactly where vitamins, minerals and trace elements come in: Because they can remedy this deficiency simply, efficiently and cost-effectively.

And then please don’t make any objections based on debility: it is clear that fast food and capsules cannot replace a full, balanced meal. It’s called food SUPPLEMENT and not food SUBSTITUTE. We don’t make astronaut food. Vitamin supplements have a supportive effect when important micronutrients are missing. They never replace vegetables, raw foods, whole foods. Because the whole plant with all its many ingredients is much more valuable than a single vitamin from it, we almost always encapsulate the full spectrum. And not a single, synthetically produced and possibly modified active ingredient like Big Pharma. Whose products the older doctor or expert from Part 1 has prescribed completely uncritically throughout his professional life.

It’s great that you report on vitamins, minerals and trace elements. Everyone should really be talking about them. Less nice is the way you report on them. All right: there’s no such thing as bad publicity. At some point, good, cheap and effective will prevail. We’re not worried about that. It’s a turning point here too. And we’ll help: to the best of our ability and to the best of our knowledge and belief.

Our first reaction

(More gaudy and offensive, true. But no less true. And fact-based. Read for yourself!)

We are aware that truth is relative and in times of pluralism and alternative facts, you can justifiably claim anything you like. Thankfully, free speech is held in high regard in Switzerland and everyone is free to form their own opinion. However, in order to counter your at least incomplete, not to say misleadingly perceived information mandate, we are happy to contribute a few observations of our own to the discourse: “Vitamins & Co. – what they really do”.(Click here for the PULS article).

• Take vitamin D, for example: at least 50% of the Swiss population have vitamin D levels that are not high enough to support bone health in all adults and muscle health in older people. In other words, they have a deficiency. This is not what we claim, but what is stated in an official paper from the Federal Office of Public Health.
• Anyone who now thinks that “everything is half as bad”, as the expert from the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office would have you believe in your article, is advised to find out more about the connection between vitamin D levels and health and to try this internet search, for example.
• Regarding vitamin C and your claim that it lacks any proof of efficacy: a quick search in the study database www.pubmed.gov for the keywords “vitamin c infection” produces 4363 results. Of course, this does not mean that all these studies have found a positive effect of vitamin C, but just a quick glance at the summaries shows that there is an effect. What makes you think that there is no evidence for the effect of vitamin C?
• The statements in the vitamin B check: Sorry, that’s outrageous, not to say negligent. You don’t even bother to answer the initial question “How much of it do we need to be healthy?”, but just blather on about the dangers of vitamin B12. Perhaps it was a case of trial and error.
• All we can say about the threat of an oversupply of vitamins is that food supplements must comply with strict content specifications, are monitored and the companies concerned are severely reprimanded in the event of errors. In this safe system, there is no need for the scaremongering of Puls.
• In response to the statement that studies show that diet has hardly any effect, we like to cite a single study, the so-called Rotterdam Study, which showed that people who took a lot of natural vitamin K2 over 10 years had significantly less calcium deposits in the arteries and far better cardiovascular health than others. We think so: It certainly makes a difference.
• Regarding the accusation of moneymaking: food supplements are among the cheapest products in pharmacies and drugstores. As they are not covered by health insurance, they could not survive on the free market otherwise. If you want to criticize unfair business practices, then please focus much more on those unnamed players who sell exorbitantly expensive products, based on questionable studies, recommended by doctors they have bought, with the identical active ingredient as in the previous product, but repackaged and with a minimally modified formula, thus again with full patent protection, at three times the price and with the same side effects to Mr. and Mrs. Swiss.
• Where there is so much shadow, there is of course also light: we definitely don’t want to leave a veritable highlight unmentioned. Minute 14:50: “Secondary plant substances are very healthy.” We should never have said that, but you speak from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you and bravo!

In conclusion: The myth of supposedly unnecessary to dangerous vitamin supplements does not become any truer through constant repetition. No matter how eagerly you repeat the same litany. “Think first and then cackle” was what our physics teacher used to throw at us when we were obviously talking garbage or hadn’t done our homework. That wasn’t nice and we certainly don’t want to say it here, but a little more care and balance wouldn’t be a bad thing for a health editorial team, would it?

12 years of experience with vital substances have shown us that a great deal can be achieved with dietary supplements. This is confirmed by the encouraging reports from countless therapists, chemists and holistic doctors who support their patients with micronutrients and can no longer imagine their profession without these gifts from nature. We therefore stand behind our products 100%, out of deep conviction and above all with a clear conscience!