Comment from Facebook

I started commenting on this link on Facebook, and then moved most of the comment here when I realized that its length was getting embarrassingly long.  The article referenced research "proving" the dangers of taking food supplements, with a lead-in about Linus Pauling's scientific career and his fall from grace when he began to promote the value of food supplements.  As a two-time Nobel Prize winner, Pauling's recommendations were initially warmly received and then eventually discredited.

Comment:
I would find all the research results more compelling if I knew for sure that they were conducted with food-based supplements instead of synthetic petroleum-based ones.

The Pauling narrative is sobering.

The bottom line for me in the search for good nutrition is to seek an answer to this question:  What is God's nutritional provision for me, right now?

I believe that, because we live in a fallen world and we serve a God Who loves to provide, that provision will come by various routes--none of them perfect, but many of them bearing the stamp of God's good intentions toward us.  Asking good nutrition of Him and receiving it gratefully from Him are important in this process.  Case in point:  relying solely on research is problematic in that, for everything "proven" by research, its opposite can very often also be "proven." For example, I understand that JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) says that "ït seems prudent" to take a multi-vitamin/multi-mineral supplement, although here they're quoted as having discounted the good effect of taking Vitamin C for a cold. Those two are not necessarily "opposites," but the take-away impression from the above article could very well be "JAMA does not recommend taking food supplements," when the truth is actually much more nuanced than that.  

I agree that good research is important, because knowing how things are is better than not knowing.  If we begin and end with research, however, confusion is the likely result, as I see it.  That may have been Pauling's biggest mistake.  He took research and ran with it, even though it was apparently deeply flawed or too limited to be helpful.  His earlier research methods may also have been flawed and/or limited, but in those cases, they nevertheless resulted in revelations and conclusions that were hailed as brilliant.

I see in Pauling's story a cautionary tale about the necessity for keen, Godly discernment.  Genius and dysfunction are often separated by a very fine line, and we don't always see the difference clearly, especially in ourselves.