HIGH-profile reports claiming vitamin pills are "useless" have been condemned by the Hanley Swan-based company that supplies local, national and international markets with food supplements.

Research carried out at Oxford University made headlines in the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph last week by concluding that vitamin pills like those produced by Nature's Own have no beneficial effect.

But the company's managing director Peter Wallace claimed flaws in research and newspaper hyperbole meant the reports could not be taken seriously.

"The headlines, especially those in The Mail, are grossly exaggerated," he said. "They imply all supplementation is useless when a trial has only been done on three items out of a possible 40-plus vitamins and minerals that are in regular use."

Mr Wallace said the cocktail of vitamins given to 10,000 people in the study - vitamins C and E with beta-carotine - would not have been administered by an experienced complementary practitioner.

Scientists who compared the health of those who had been taking the pills against a control group who were given placebos, concluded that while no negative effects occurred, nor did any positive ones.

But Mr Wallace said the combination handed out "lacked any of the trace minerals that are essential to enable the body's optimal immune and protection to be available".

He explained: "As a comparative example, it would be invalid to run a trial on sleeping pills and find they are useless in the prevention and treatment of athlete's foot!"

Simon Evans, who sells vitamin supplements at his Malvern Link business Evans Pharmacy, said he also thought the research had been a bit selective.

"I think there's merit in vitamin and mineral preparations where you're basically just replacing things that people might not be getting from their regular diet," he said.

Mr Evans added that research claiming specific benefits for vitamin supplements are published all the time, but newspapers only made a fuss of the ones that suited them.