A top scientist has claimed trendy supplements have no health benefits and are simply a money-making scheme, a UK paper reports.

The British publication The Mail cited Professor Tim Spector as saying: “We should buy real food instead and eat a predominantly plant-based diet with minimal if any, ultra-processed food.”

The author of Food For Life: The New Science Of Eating Well said supplements make 'total mugs' of those who buy them.

Speaking at the literary Hay Festival in Wales, the genetic epidemiology expert said: “These supplements are driven by the same companies ... they're going to be the new future giant food companies.

“Their budgets are massive. They're not these artisan little people in the back of a shed in Somerset making a superb organic supplement.

“They're all made in massive factories in China and you have no control over what it is and 99 per cent of them have been shown not to work at all.

“So we're total mugs paying all that money for supplements when we should be spending it on real food.

“The only supplement with any benefit is B12 for vegans who are not eating as many iron-rich foods as they should.

TV doctor Chris van Tulleken, 44, added: “The last time I looked at the big meta-analysis, my reading of it was that there is no supplement or extract of any food that brings any health benefit in a healthy person with the possible exception of vitamin D, or B12 in a vegan.”

Professor Spector, 64, said he recognises that it is 'impossible to do away with all the unhealthy foods completely' but said people need educating on how to identify them.

“We could massively increase the life expectancy of the poor and our health span. It [the UK] is officially the sickest country in Europe.”