Being healthy vs. getting ripped off.

April 20, 2007 1:16 PM

Fancy multivitamins: worth the price?

I've heard many contradictory takes on whether or not the sorts of whole-food-source-pro-biotic-vegetarian-all-natural multivitamins sold at Whole Foods and the like are worth the price tag. I've had trouble finding anything approaching a definitive answer. Just want to know whether to keep shelling out when I can or just go pick up a 400-count bucket of Centrum at the same cost.

posted by 2or3whiskeysodas to Health & Fitness (30 answers total)

As my doctor eloquently put it, "Unless you are suffering from vitamin deficiency you will just shit them out."
posted by geoff. at 1:32 PM on April 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: geoff., was your doctor referring to all multivitamins?
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 1:34 PM on April 20, 2007

The evidence that any multivitamin is necessary, unless you are treating a specific deficiency, is inconclusive. I doubt that paying more for organic local macrobiotic homeopathic cruelty-free multivitamins is going to make any difference.
posted by decathecting at 1:37 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

"If you're taking a multivitamin, there's no reason to stop," notes Paul Coates, director of the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. "But if you're not taking a multivitamin, there's also no reason to start taking one, either."
posted by decathecting at 1:38 PM on April 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

Taking a multivitamin is probably not going to hurt you.
Taking a multivitamin is probably not going to help you.
posted by ruwan at 1:51 PM on April 20, 2007

To add to the tangent that your question has become (sorry, I have no answer for your original question but hope someone does!)...I've read, and through first hand experience found, that if you're taking a multi-vitamin in the months prior to getting pregnant, you'll have less morning sickness. In my 5 1/2 months of pregnancy, I threw up twice! Even if it is not 100% proven yet, I think that's a damn good reason to start taking one!
posted by lil' ears at 1:55 PM on April 20, 2007

How good do you think your diet is? If you really do eat 5 servings of a variety of fruits and veggies daily, probably any multi will do. On the other hand if your diet were that good you probably would only take certain targeted nutrients (oh yeah, you need that L-argenine...).

If you however are like most of us, a multi is not a bad idea. And I am going to go out on a limb and recall an Amway meeting I was forced to attend as a teenager. The local poobah was talking about Nutrilite vitamins, and the story told was that back when they discovered vitamin B-2, they had a conversation in the lab about whether they should add some of that to the blend. One of the other scientists suggested that they run a test and see if it was already there. After all, he argued, this stuff is made from food, not piles of chemical dust, and food contains nutrients. Yes, in fact it did turn out to contain the brand new vitamin, and the labels were changed to reflect this fact despite the fact that the formula had not changed.

So what the hell is ilsa rambling about? If you are going to bother taking vitamins, take ones made from food, not chemical dusts. Such products can be found at a reasonable price; stop going to Whole Paycheck Foods and google "cheap vitamins." You might check out your local vitamin shop (the earth muffin place in that strip mall you can never make a left out of, not the GNC in the mall) to read some ingredient panels and check prices.
posted by ilsa at 1:55 PM on April 20, 2007

(oops 5 1/2 month so far, that is)
posted by lil' ears at 1:56 PM on April 20, 2007

You'll likely just be making very expensive, vitamin-rich urine.
posted by gramcracker at 2:08 PM on April 20, 2007

Ilsa, do you have any citations to back up your claims?
posted by decathecting at 2:11 PM on April 20, 2007

There is one reason I pay more for organic / no-additive vitamins, and one reason alone - the regular ones give me horrible stomach aches. It seems to be a sensitivity to the fillers & dyes that many of them use. Through trial and error I have only found a few brands of multi-vitamin that don't make me nauseous.

If regular One-a-Day's don't bother you, and you're not allergic to or opposed to any ingredients in the regular drugstore/grocery store vitamins, I think they're probably just as effective as the pricier stuff.
posted by tastybrains at 2:22 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

I do not have the actual textbook to cite, but I read in my high school Foods textbook that there is no difference between naturally and artificially derived vitamins. The example they used is regular vitamin C tablets and the kind that has "MADE FROM ROSEHIPS" all over the package. The rosehip people just figure they can make health-conscious people shell out a few more bucks for "natural" vitamins.
This does not necessarily mean all multivitamins are the same, since different vitamins can reduce or help absorption of others, so I imagine the proportions and amounts matter. But it does not matter whether the vitamins came from some scary glowing test tube or organic fair-trade sea kelp.
posted by Juliet Banana at 2:22 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

A friend working at Whole Foods says "No serious difference".

And to add my two cents, as everyone else has, I don't believe people need to be taking vitamins unless you have a serious deficiency (and maybe not even then). Personally I think they have the potential to do more harm than good.
posted by Roman Graves at 2:26 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

I remember a doctor recommending a multi. When asked about what kind, he said, "el cheapo is el besto."
posted by Danf at 2:37 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

As long as it doesn't, as tastybrains says, give you a tummyache it doesn't matter. I didn't take multivitamins for a long time because I'd been trying "One-A-Day" vitamins and they hurt my widdle tummy. But I tried Centrum to check for a difference and they cause no gastric distress.
posted by Justinian at 2:48 PM on April 20, 2007

More expensive vitamins are probably marginally better than cheaper brands, but I suspect that the difference between vitamins in food (where associated minerals/proteins/fats will enhance the benefit) and vitamins in pill form is much greater than the difference between any two pill brands. If you're going to go for pills, go cheaper.
posted by mediaddict at 2:52 PM on April 20, 2007

MSNBC ran this article on multivitamins. Money quote:

Of 21 brands of multivitamins on the market in the United States and Canada selected by ConsumerLab.com and tested by independent laboratories, just 10 met the stated claims on their labels or satisfied other quality standards.

Most worrisome, according to ConsumerLab.com president Dr. Tod Cooperman, is that one product, The Vitamin Shoppe Multivitamins Especially for Women, was contaminated with lead.

Multivitamins which did best in the tests: Centrum Silver, Member's Mark Complete Multi (distributed by Sam's Club), One A Day Women's and Flintstones Complete.
posted by joannemerriam at 2:58 PM on April 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

The vitamins you get from the `all natural' vendor and from our supermarket contain chemically identical materials.

It's like the difference between taking a couple of aspirin for a headache or having willowbark extract. It contains the same active ingredient (salicylic acid), chemically indistinguishable, but in the synthetic version, you know the dosage you're getting.

The multivitamin you buy in your supermarket is going to do as much good as the `wholesome, all natural' premium priced product. Natural does not necessarily equate to `good for you'.
posted by tomble at 3:10 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

My family and I used to take really expensive, mail-order vitamins, to the tune of about $100 worth every 3 months.

Then we stopped and I started taking some cheaper stuff from Costco.

I can't tell the difference. YMMV, of course.
posted by shino-boy at 3:12 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

In my nutrition class (at nursing school) I gleaned basically one factoid about vitamin supplements: unless you're officially lacking, don't bother.
However, if you are pregnant, want to become pregnant, or could possibly become pregnant, get thee to a GNC and grab some folic acid. Spina Bifida is bad!
posted by nursegracer at 3:39 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

decathecting:

No. No evidence, no citations, no degree in science, no college courses in human nutrition, no status as a nutritional anthropologist. I am describing a story I heard probably 20 years ago, about something that happened probably 30 years before that. I used it to support my personal opinion that given a choice, vitamins made out of foodstuffs were more likely to be "complete" than ones made out of "pure distilled nutrient extracts". This makes sense inasmuch scientists continually discover more about human nutrition. If it makes you feel better, here's somebody with MS and RD after her name that says "food should always be the first source of nutrition...."

On a related note, I find that taking vitamins with food reduces any tummy discomfort that might occur. This is apparently not a good idea with all vitamins, and this nice person actually has citations.
posted by ilsa at 4:33 PM on April 20, 2007

If you are going to bother taking vitamins, take ones made from food, not chemical dusts

Bullshit. If your body needs X mg daily of substance Y, it doesn't matter one bit where you get it from.

That said, vitamins are not a replacement for eating healthy, because they don't provide lots of other things that your body needs. (Dietary fiber, for example.)

Bottom line, if you know that you eat like shit and aren't going to change your ways anytime soon, then pop a multivitamin - it may help compensate for some deficiency. It's generally unnecessary, though, and you'd be better off learning to eat right.
posted by chrisamiller at 4:45 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Seeing the USP seal on a bottle of vitamins makes me feel better, and it happens to be on many inexpensive brands. (Schiff is on this list but not that one, don't know what's up with that.) AFAIK it's the only independent verification system for supplements in the USA. They state that their seal means:

-What's on the label is in fact in the bottle—all the listed ingredients in the declared amount.
-The supplement does not contain harmful levels of contaminants.
-The supplement will break down and release ingredients in the body
- The supplement has been made under good manufacturing practices

The down side is that it's new enough (several years old) that not a whole lot of companies seem to have the seal. However, in my experience it's not hard to find brands that do.
posted by needs more cowbell at 5:05 PM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm currently taking an expensive multivitamin to treat my hypothyroid condition (my idea). FWIW, when I consulted my doctor about starting the vitamins, he said that I had picked the "right" kind of multivitamin, in that it was a serving of three pills per day - two huge solid tablets and one gel cap with the essential oil-type vitamins. His opinion was that the all-in-one single-pill multivitamins weren't worth taking at all (even for people who are not treating a specific condition but just taking a multi for the heck of it) because a single pill can't contain enough nutrients to truly supplement one's intake of essential vitamins.

I'm trying these. Note that Invite Health's website sucks eggs and their online ordering is seriously broken! If you want to order anything from them I suggest you use the telephone. I'm due for blood work in about a month and I'll know then whether these dang horse pills are doing any good.
posted by turtlegirl at 5:13 PM on April 20, 2007

First, notice how much responses are based on opinion.

This is partially due to the nature of the scientific knowledge beast. Funding is more readily available for substances which can be patented. Most medical schools have traditionally given a day or less focus on vitamins. So the amount of good science isn't proportional to how important the subject is.

I have heard of studies showing undigested vitamins being poorly absorbed, including whole vitamins being pooped out. This is based on the binders used. Because of this I use a chewable - I'm happy with the brand Nature's Plus.

When I worked in a drug unit, people looked about ten years older; when I worked at a vitamin store, people looked about ten years younger. This includes people who had been taking your basic chemical B's, but for a long time. And since they were doing that, they were likely taking care of themselves in other ways, so that was a biased sample.

There are three big questions on food-based vitamins that I come up with. The first is impurities. Much of the vitamin supply is industrially produced in countries with lower standards than we might like. A company producing organic food-style is likely to have a personal stake in the quality of the product, no pesticides, etc.

The second is how well our body processes the vitamins. For example, can we absorb calcium just fine from limestone, or is calcium which has already been biologically metabolized easier for our body to handle?

Another aspect of this is chemical gradient. For tissue like cartilage, which is poorly vascularized, a higher bloodstream content of a nutrient effectively 'pushes' the substance into the tissue faster. This could be an argument for cheap vitamins - if there is no difference, than jack up the dosage at a cheaper rate, since you will be excreting (peeing out) a lot more of the stuff.

Finally, there are issues like chirality. Biologically produced substances are much more likely to twist in one direction. Chemical vat products tend to produce equal amounts of both twists. The broader issue is the question of whether non-biological products actually interfere with the processing of the 'good stuff'. I've heard anecdotal evidence on this, but know of no good studies.
posted by dragonsi55 at 6:45 PM on April 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

dragonsi55: regarding chirality, it's not the case that "chemical vat products tend to produce equal amounts of both twists." Truth is that for many compounds, chiral syntheses are available; even if they aren't, there are often ways that the enantiomers can be separated. Biochemical companies are very aware of the problem of chirality, since in many cases, it's the difference between a working medicine and something that's as useful as a placebo. Not all vitamins are chiral [vitamin A {retinol}, for example, isn't, while vitamin E {tocopherol} and vitamin C {L-ascorbate} are], and those that are are almost certainly being produced in the correct chiral form. Actually, a bunch of the "vitamins" are actually groups of related compounds to begin with - sometimes chiral variants (vitamin E), sometimes just similar molecules (vitamin D2 and D3). Point is, chemical companies are not pawning off D-ascorbate as vitamin C, and if they are, you'd have good reason to complain & report them to the FDA. If there are several chiral forms of a vitamin in a multivitamin pill, odds are that it's because several chiral forms are observed in nature.

Furthermore, "jacking up the dosage" of multivitamins isn't safe, as a rule. Multivitamins are a mixture of different vitamins, as their names would imply. Some of them are water soluble, and will simply be excreted out if consumed in bulk. Others are fat soluble, and, tending to build up can cause severe health problems if consumed regularly in large amounts. Consuming a lot of vitamin C in hopes of increasing the blood concentration and absorbing more isn't that hazardous, but consuming a lot of vitamin A is more apt to leave you ill. [And when you consider it, vitamins obtained from food face the same problems, so it might not be the wisest thing to second-guess the body's own internal distribution system.]
posted by ubersturm at 8:34 PM on April 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

The only thing I'd like to add to this conversation is that you need to watch your consumption of Vitamin A - too much is bad for you. Google Vitamin A Liver damage for more information. Lots and lots of stuff, like fruit juices and flavored oatmeal, are fortified with Vitamin A so it's really easy to get too much in your diet, especially if you start taking supplements.

I take vitamin supplements, but I take a smaller dose to limit my Vitamin A exposure.
posted by exhilaration at 9:29 PM on April 20, 2007

uberstorm - good points all.
posted by dragonsi55 at 9:30 PM on April 20, 2007

take ones made from food, not chemical dusts

By your same logic, the concentrates made from "food" are more likely to contain unknown, toxic additives than single-source chemical "dusts".

If you are eating a typical developed West/North diet and do not suffer from some genetic deficiencies relating to production or transport, the only real vitamins you need to be concerned with are the water-soluble ones. Any cheap multivit contains more than enough of those. Get the cheapest USP one.
posted by meehawl at 7:14 AM on April 21, 2007

as a woman, the only vitamin I've really noticed a difference is B6/B12/C/folic acid. the pill might increase the body's need for these.
posted by ejaned8 at 5:49 PM on April 21, 2007