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Such cases are rare, though. A normal dose of over-the-counter medicine such as paracetamol does more toxic damage to the body than any vitamin.

Collins has welcomed the EU directive but believes there should be tighter controls and regulations on supplements. “They should be treated in the same way as paracetamols, not Smarties,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with taking a multivitamin a day but the trend now is for people to look for problems in their health where there aren’t any.”

It is true that this low-level hypochondria and half- informed health consciousness has helped turn dietary supplements into a huge and growing industry in Britain.

Well-heeled and apparently healthy women in Knightsbridge, central London, were queuing up in Harrods yesterday to get a “well person lifestyle healthcheck”. For £50 a pop, their blood was being analysed and a “prescription” of which vitamins and nutrients they were thought to be lacking would follow.

Patrick Holford, nutritionist and author of the bestselling The Optimum Nutrition Bible, is one of the champions of this new approach to health. “Even if you eat as much organic and free range food as you possibly can, your diet will not match that of the last century’s,” he said. “In the 1970s a British chicken had 9g of fat per 100g. Now it’s 23. Oranges bought in a supermarket could contain virtually no vitamin C.”

It can’t be denied that imported fruit and vegetables combined with our soil quality means that the fruit and vegetables we eat are not as nutritious as they once were. Over the past half-century or so the vegetables on sale in Britain have 27% less iron and and 33% less magnesium. So, argue the pill poppers, we need to take higher doses of vitamins.

“I eat as healthy a diet as I possibly can and I still take supplements,” said Holford, who consumes a multivitamin a day as well as zinc and omega-3, which he says is the minimum for a reasonably healthy person.

“The 21st century demands a lot more from the human body and the human brain. We have more stressful lives,” he said.

It is a seductive argument, but one from which Holford and growing numbers of high street nutritionists are making a very healthy profit.

The British Dietetic Association argues that our diets are more varied than they’ve ever been. A spokesperson said: “Thirty years ago we weren’t eating kiwi fruit and mangos. There are plenty more sources now of the nutrients we need, and as long as our diets are varied we will get them all.”

Additional reporting: Holly Watt

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