“In America even a vitamin can become an instant celebrity with its own die-hard fan base and publicity machine. Vitamin E shot to fame in the early 1990’s, after two large survey studies noted that male and female health professionals who said they took a supplement of up to 400 international units of the vitamin every day seemed to go on to develop fewer cases of heart disease or cancer than their peers who were not taking the supplement.

The number of Americans, cardiologists included, who gulped daily capsules of vitamin E suddenly surged, from relatively few in 1990 to an estimated 23 million by 2000, according to an analysis published last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But in a flurry of strong follow-up studies published in the last few years, vitamin E has emerged as a sort of middle-aged, B-list actor not fulfilling its early promise. Increasingly, even many scientists and health advisory groups who say they still have high hopes for the vitamin as it occurs naturally in vegetable oils, nuts and leafy greens have begun to pan the pills, except for use by subgroups of patients with particular medical conditions.” (New York Times )