The only thing that Catherine Price is selling here is good reporting, engaging storytelling, and more than you thought you could possibly learn about vitamins. Praise for Vitamania : 'Measured, funny, and fascinating.

And her ultimate message is both inspiring and straightforward: given all that we don't know about vitamins and nutrition, the best way to decide what to eat is to stop obsessing and simply embrace this uncertainty head-on. The result is a page-turning exploration of the history, science, hype, and future of nutrition. Price's travels to vitamin manufacturers and food laboratories and military testing kitchens-along with her deep dive into the history of nutritional science- provide a witty and dynamic narrative arc that binds Vitamania together. And it's our vitamin-inspired desire for effortless shortcuts that created today's dietary supplement industry, a veritable Wild West of overpromising 'miracle' substances that can be legally sold without any proof that they are effective or safe. By buying into a century of hype and advertising, we have accepted the false idea that particular dietary chemicals can be used as shortcuts to health-whether they be antioxidants or omega-3s or, yes, vitamins. Though we've gained much from our embrace of vitamins, what we've lost is a crucial sense of perspective. The era of 'vitamania,' as one 1940s journalist called it, had begun. Yet it wasn't long before vitamins spread from labs of scientists into the realm of food marketers and began to take on a life of their own. When vitamins were discovered a mere century ago, they changed the destiny of the human species by preventing and curing many terrifying diseases. In Vitamania, award-winning journalist Catherine Price offers a lucid and lively journey through our cherished yet misguided beliefs about vitamins, and reveals a straightforward, blessedly anxiety-free path to enjoyable eating and good health.

By focusing on vitamins at the expense of everything else, we've become blind to the bigger picture: despite our belief that vitamins are an absolute good-and the more of them, the better-vitamins are actually small and surprisingly mysterious pieces of a much larger nutritional puzzle.

What's more, what we think we know is harming both our personal nutrition and our national health. ' absorbing and meticulously researched history of the beginnings and causes of our obsession with vitamins and nutrition.' - The New York Times Most of us know nothing about vitamins.

Vitamania book