I've never been able to make up my mind on how I feel about supplements. Many times I've been convinced by things online that different vitamins and minerals will be the answer to my acne problem. But after trying them and seeing no difference I'm always turned off of the idea of supplements for a short time, but eventually end up trying another one.
Right now I'm in the "supplements are bad" camp. But it's more because of the fact that they're artificially produced and throw off balances in the body... I was only taking Vitamin C and even though it's water soluble I still quit it because I was afraid of damage to my organs. It was also in powder form, meaning there were no additional ingredients like magnesium stearate, gelatin, etc. I chose the powder because I read so much about these additives being bad for you.
But I was just thinking... what's the big deal? Is it really so bad to consume these ingredients in an amount the size of a few grains of sand every day? I eat out a few times a week and while I avoid the foods I know trigger a reaction in me, I'm still consuming far more preservatives and iffy ingredients that way than I would from a few pills.
I know many people here are on raw vegan diets and all that so they probably don't consume any strange ingredients and those in the pills would be their only source of them. So for them it kind of makes sense to not take pills... why take trace amounts if you can otherwise completely avoid them? Might as well go all the way.
But for anyone else, who occasionally eats even the healthiest chips or sandwiches or sauces, are the added ingredients in supplements really all that significant?
It depends on how sensitive you are to those ingredients....gelatin, potato starch, titanium dioxide, magnesium sterate, gluten, soy, etc. Powder forms are the best if you want to avoid capsules and fillers, but most supplements don't come in powder form because they actually need those preservatives in the capsule to stay fresh. If you can't get your nutrients any other way or if you have deficiencies then supplements can help you, provided that they don't contain too many extra ingredients. Unfortunately, the hardest one to avoid is magnesium sterate - even if it's vegetable mag. stereate, it can still be toxic in large quantities. If you are only taking a couple of supplements a day, though, then you should be fine. Many supplements contain less than 2% of fillers and sterate, so it's definitely not as bad as eating junk food.