Medicine: Vitamins & Vigor

Do healthy people need vitamin pills? Many a doctor and nutritionist has loudly asserted that they do not. Last week the California Institute of Technology offered evidence that extra vitamins are good for almost anybody.

Four years ago, Cal Tech and the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. began a large-scale experiment at Lockheed's Burbank plant.

Five days a week for a year, they fed pills to selected groups of workers — mostly healthy young men whose regular diet was plenty of meat, eggs and milk, not quite enough fruit and vegetables). Half the men got pills containing vitamins and minerals, the other half just pills.

During the first six months, there was no visible difference in the working efficiency of the two groups—although both groups, apparently for psychological reasons, did better than a third group which got no pills at all. In the second six months, the vitamin-fed group pulled ahead. (Conclusion: taking extra vitamins usually shows no results for at least six months.) They had 19% less absenteeism, 27% less turnover (i.e., fewer quit or were fired); they also scored 2.6% higher in the company's merit ratings.

The vitamin pills seemed to have more effect on the worker's mental vigor than on their physical condition; the vitamin eaters got sick just about as often as the others, but they played hooky less often and seemed much keener and happier at their work. The investigators figured that the pills had added the equivalent of 10½ working days a year to each man's output.