When it comes to vitamins, there are lots of mixed messages. Some say they're good for you while others say they can be harmful. A group of French researchers recently sought to set the record straight. The study found taking a multi-vitamin does nothing for your health.

Is the multi-vitamin a friend, foe or neither? “Because I do feel like my diet is short on some of the things that I should be eating, so I started taking a liquid vitamin,” says Kimberly Wilcox.

"Many vitamins are, but I don't know if a multi-vitamin is,” says Gary Luckert.

“Because I think it's healthy and good for you, but, I'm not sure,” says Amber Paulsen.

“The vitamin industry has capitalized a lot on people who are worried and promote the use of vitamins to reassure them that they won't catch certain diseases and that's all poppycock,” says Dr. Don Darst, an internal medicine physician at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

He agrees with the recent study showing multi-vitamins do nothing for your health. “Both the control group and the experimental group had normal vitamin levels and what they were looking at was what is the benefit of adding additional vitamins on top of normal vitamin levels in the body and they found no benefit."

“Vitamins by themselves are not going to prevent anything, I do agree with that,” says registered nurse Kathi Bratberg, a holistic nutritionist at the Omaha Center for Conscious Health.

The doctor and nurse believe a multi-vitamin can be helpful if someone is vitamin deficient, but where they disagree is who is deficient and who is not. “The common healthy, everyday person that's eating really, really well, that's exercising and feels great probably doesn't need a multi-vitamin, but most Americans, can't say that," says Bratberg.

“In Omaha, Nebraska we are very well fed and I don't really see vitamin deficiency outside of vitamin D,” says Dr. Darst. “I've been seeing a lot of that lately."

Instead of asking whether or not the study is right, many believe the question should be, is your diet vitamin sufficient?

There is a test you can take to see where your vitamin levels are at, but it's expensive. It's called an Ion Test and it costs over $1,000. Click here to read an article on the vitamin study.