The question of whether we should take food supplements has been debated endlessly, and there is no single answer that all will agree to. When I first took an interest in diet and health, and supplementation, more than 20 years ago, the standard view of doctors was that you do not need food supplements. Eat and drink a good diet, and you will get all the vitamins and minerals you need - that was what doctors would say.

That was the public view anyway, although I could not help but note, when I visited the home of a doctor I knew in England, that he had a good supply of multivitamins and minerals on a kitchen shelf. He also had a couple of other vitamin bottles, vitamin E and one other I fail to remember after all this time. Interestingly, he had always been a "scotch in the evening" man, but had suddenly switched to red wine. I made no comment, just smiled inwardly. I was a red wine drinker anyway, and I had been taking a general multivitamin and mineral for some time already.

By the early 80's, the health food revolution was already under way, and the food supplement industry preparing for rapid growth over the next 25 years. I ignored what doctors were saying, and started taking a general multivitamin and mineral supplement. I did so through common sense and logic, for the following reasons:

1. A good diet may have provided all the vitamins and minerals needed 200 years ago, so in a way the doctors were probably right.

2. The human body had evolved very slowly over thousand of years, always with plenty of time to adapt to environmental changes. Over the last 2 centuries, though, and especially the last 50 years, the human body has been bombarded with massive quantities of toxic substances, chemicals in our food, water, and the air we breathe. Could evolution possibly have dealt with that through evolution, in such a short space of time? My common sense told me no. While a virus can change rapidly, the human body cannot.

I decided to err on the side of caution and have taken a general vitamin and mineral supplement ever since. Have I benefitted from that long term use? I am certain I have, but that is not science. However, I did observe a notable drop in incidences of colds and flu. When I worked in London, I would get 7 or 8 bugs a year; that quickly dropped to 2 or three after taking the supplements, and with a faster ability to recover. That had a knock on effect of reducing incidences of iritis, which tended to follow a cold or flu when I was run down.

One thing I noticed a few years later was that two large cysts I had had since a teenager, or maybe earlier, had gone. One enormous cyst by my knee had quietly disappeared, and a smaller one on my arm too. Any connection? There is no scientific evidence that there is a connection. But those cysts were seemingly there for life, and the only change I could think of that could have made them disappear was the addition of multivitamins and minerals.

Things have come a long way since then, and doctors are more likely to advise patients to use a vitamin supplement. In the Philippines, where I now live, doctors encourage the use of multivitamins from a young age, or single supplements, such as folic acid for pregnant women, when needed. At least I no longer feel like a supplement rebel.