This title will result in deja vu for some. The headline “To E or not to E” has been used on several recent articles reporting on a study of the benefits of vitamin E supplementation.
The topic likely generates an “I've already experienced this” feeling in other ways as well. Controversy has raged for decades over the benefits of adding vitamin E. In the 1970s, while studying for my M.S. degree at the University of Minnesota's Department of Food Science and Nutrition, I wrote “Debunking the Vitamin E Myth.” Much time was spent plodding through hundreds of references in search of solid research (hopefully published in high-profile journals, such as those of the American Medical or American Dietetics associations) supporting the heart-disease- and cancer-preventing--even libido-enhancing--properties claimed for vitamin E. They were very hard to find.