SPATE of vitamin startups has launched in recent months, offering streamlined delivery of the chalky drugstore standbys.

But do supplements have any legitimate health benefits?

Care/of, which launched in November, thinks so. The supplement service lets users pinpoint pressing health issues — failing eyesight, brain health, stress — and suggests a tailored pack of vitamins that also takes into account needs and lifestyles. Packs typically contain three to six different vitamins, cost $20 to $40 per month and are delivered monthly.

“What we found in the market is that everyone is different, and has different goals, lifestyles, diets and values,” says Care/of co-founder and CEO Craig Elbert. “When we talk to people in their 20s, [their needs] tend to be more for appearance — clearer skin, better workouts. In their 30s, women start to think about getting pregnant, or a family history of bone problems.”

While Care/of experiments with customization, fellow newcomer Ritual, which launched in October, offers one option: a multivitamin for women ages 18-50, at $30 for a month’s supply, also delivered automatically.

But even a simple supplement isn’t without controversy. Industry critics argue that humans can get all the nutrients we need from food, and that vitamins, which aren’t regulated by the FDA, are an expensive waste at best and dangerous at worst.

Plus, vitamins — and their efficacy — remain a mystery to many doctors.

“The medical profession is particularly attentive to vitamin deficiency — we know that if you’re vitamin C deficient, you get scurvy,” says Dr. Steven Lamm, the medical director of the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Men’s Health at NYU Langone. “But all of the information we have is based on illness, not wellness” — meaning it’s harder for a doctor to know how much of a certain vitamin will make a patient healthy. That makes it difficult for New vitamins take guesswork out of supplements, but are they a waste of money? doctors to then advise patients on what, and how much, to take. It’s also tough to tell if and when a vitamin is actually working. “It’s really a leap of faith — you can’t take a multivitamin and expect to wake up the next day and feel better,” says Lamm, adding that placebo effects — perceived benefits due to a belief in the product — are particularly common with vitamins. Ritual founder Kat Schneider says modern life has left consumers in need of a vitamin boost that might have been moot a century ago. “Our diets have changed over the years, our food and soil has changed,” Schneider says. Lamm agrees — and believes that just because people don’t always appear to need vitamins doesn’t mean they can’t be beneficial. Despite supplements’ limitations, he still suggests them to his patients — with caveats. “Simple supplementation is reasonable,” he says. “I feel bad for people who take 30 [supplements] a day.”