Multivitamins: Do his and hers make a difference?

Many multivitamins come in his and her varieties. Examples are One A Day Women's, One A Day Men's Health Formula, Centrum Ultra Women's and Centrum Ultra Men's. Different companies take a different approach to gender-specific nutrition. One A Day Women's isn't very different from the basic One A Day Essential.

Like almost all multivitamins, gender-specific varieties claim a long list of supposed benefits. You probably shouldn't expect dramatic results from a multivitamin. But they can bring most Americans more in line with nutritional guidelines, and since guidelines for women and men differ somewhat, a gender-specific multivitamin makes some sense.

There aren't any studies showing that gender-specific vitamins have any particular health benefits. Such studies would be very difficult and costly to run. In fact, the value of any multivitamin is an open question. A study of more than 160,000 women published in February concluded that there's "convincing evidence" that multivitamins don't protect postmenopausal women from common cancers or heart disease.

Still, it seems likely they have value to people who don't get enough nutrients in their diets -- which is pretty much everyone,