Children’s Multi Vitamin and Mineral products

There is a whole load of controversy around giving children a multi vitamin and mineral supplement. I remember as a child being given a small orange coloured and orange flavour tablet – haliborange from memory (it is a very different product today and not one we’d recommend) because that’s what my parents chose for us.

Today (50 years later) the world we live in and the food we eat is very different. We didn’t have supermarkets and we bought our fruit and vegetables from a green grocer who probably sourced produce from a local wholesale market – the food we ate was way better then than now. So good supplementation is even more critical.

We hope to provide some guidance on what to look for and we will make a couple of suggestions based upon our own research into the best products for your children. So what should you look for:

• the best multi vitamin products don’t come from high street stores
• mail order companies like Solgar and Viridian have a range of well formulated children’s products.
• a one a day tablet is unlikely to make the grade as the necessary components at the levels required mean that a one a day tablet is too big to swallow.
• a chewable form is often available – but taste is critical
• don’t expect them to be cheap – £7/months supply for a 3 year old is about the minimum we would suggest as a cut off.
• the larger the child the more they will need – for example a 5 year old will probably need double the amount a 3 year old will.

About RDA

The RDA is a bit of a misnomer. Required Daily Allowance suggests that that’s all you need to take. The RDA levels are based upon the amount of a particular vitamin to prevent vitamin deficiency disease. For example Scurvy is a disease of Vitamin C deficiency – the RDA for vitamin C is based upon the amount needed  to ward off scurvy. To be truly healthy much higher levels are often (not always beneficial) helpful. We would always suggest that you follow the instructions on the bottles and if you wish to increase beyond that level either see a qualified specialist who can advise or do your own research.

Are Supplements really needed

This is a good question and one that often comes up.

• The old mantra ‘you can get all you need from a varied diet’ is not strictly true any longer. If you look at the nutritional content of a peach 30 years ago you’d need to eat 3 peaches a day to get the Vitamin C you’d need. Taking the same fruit today you’d need to eat roughly 50 a day to get the same amount of vitamin C. So while the purists are correct in one way it is actually impractical in most cases.

• the UK’s pesticide and residue committee has concluded that most fruits and vegetables should be thoroughly washed before being eaten. Thorough washing means soaking broccoli florets for at least an hour before eating to reduce the chemicals ingested. Most people I know don’t have the time to wash every bit of fruit and vegetable they eat. As we eat fruit and vegetables we actually are consuming more and more chemicals. That’s not good.

• Organic fruit and vegetables is OK isn’t it. Yes and no. Yes organic fruit and vegetables are going to contain fewer chemicals but they are still sprayed its just controlled more closely and they use safer chemicals. Even if they used no chemicals at all the rain still washes chemical pollutants out of the air and the plants end up absorbing them – just not quite as much as when they spray them. For more reading around this subject I suggest Dr Steve Nugent’s book – how to survive on a  toxic planet?

What we recommend:

Viridian ViridiKid Multi mini capsules – 90 Veg Caps

Multi Vitamins – How do you select one?

Does my multivitamin meet my needs?

Few people eat as nutritiously as they should for lasting wellness. Nutritionists recommend eating five to nine servings of fresh fruits and vegetables per day to support health, but relatively few people meet this goal. Also, modern agricultural practices have reduced the nutritional value of many forms of produce from their nutritional content of only a few decades ago.

Do you know where your minerals come from? Some minerals are derived from rocks, others are taken from salts, the best are plant-sourced, making it easy for your body to absorb them.

New research suggests that natural, plant-sourced minerals may be absorbed better by your body-so it makes sense to get them from natural forms, like plants.

So ask yourself: Am I giving my body the natural nutrition it needs? Probably not.

These are some of the things to look for:

Appearance:

• Is the product labelled as food form/food matrix
• is it of uniform colour – probably coated – not good in many cases – bright colours also signify synthetic
• if the vitamin tablet you are looking at is small and of the one a day variety it is more likely that it contains synthetics
• any worthwhile multi vitamin/mineral tablet is likely to be on the large side and you may even have to take upto 4 a day

Content from the label:

• Vitamin A- derived from mixed carotenoids- to support bones and vision.
• Vitamin C- derived from tropical acerola cherries, with 30 times more vitamin C per gram than an orange-to provide enhanced immune support.
• Is the Vitamin D₃ or cholecalciferol present – the amounts should be 500IU or more
• there should be at least 10 additional essential vitamins- including a complete B-vitamin complex (the best comes from from natural yeast sources- to provide a great source of energy)
• How many of the additional vitamins are plant sourced – if the label doesn’t say it is from a plant then it will be synthetic – any your body doesn’t like synthesised vitamins
• are the ingredients standardised – if no then the quality can and will vary from batch to batch
• To ensure the vitamins and minerals work well together standardized phytonutrients – derived from foods such as broccoli, aloe vera, cranberry juice and grape extract are helpful.

Juices vs Juicing

I’ve noticed a trend over the last 5 years and it has lead to increasing disquiet. Someone comes up with a new berry or fruit that they say has the best antioxidant levels of any fruit or berry. They then lay claim to pseudo science by saying that this and that study prove what they are saying. Most consumers will simply take the promotional claims at face value without testing the validity of the science.

Problems with the Science (actually pseudo science)

Invariably in my studies I’ve seen these new companies promoting wonder products with hugely impressive health claims. They then go on to quote a Doctor or two who says that they have seen great results and that they recommend/use it with their clients. Once you scratch below the surface the quoted scientific study has some depressingly familar paterns. The study has been done using whole fruit/berries which were tested in the laboratory for their vitamin, mineral, enzyme or phytochemical content.

The juice drink being marketted is so different from the raw fruit being tested that to claim one supports the other is an affront to common sense. Lets just look at the packaged juice:

• it will have added water, flavourings, sugar most likely
• it will be in cheap plastic bottles that will taint the contents with chemicals that will harm you
• it will have a sell by date or a best by date – but it will last without degrading for months.
• it will not need refrigeration
• it will have been stored in a humidity controlled warehouse to protect the packaging not the contents

The juice itself will have:

• been pasturised to kill off any bacteria that could cause the product to spoil
• it will have added preservatives to prevent spoiling

The net effect is that:

• the juice drink is effectively lifeless as the heat of pasteurisation will have destroyed any phytochemical activity, any enzymes and most of the vitamins.
• the chemical preservatives are causing free radical damage to your systems and are often bio accumulative.
• the drink is loaded with cheap sugar to make t acceptable for most people to drink – sucrose is not good for us in large amounts
• the drink is often highly flavoured with cheap flavours to mask the unpleasant natural taste

So the bottom line is this. Don’t waste your money on nicely packaged exoticaly named juices – the claims are laregly unfounded (possibly fraudulent), the science is not valid as it relates to the whole fresh fruit, the juice in the bottle is effectively dead and nutritionally virtually useless.

This breif expose will doubtless anoy many marketers who proudly sell these products beleiving the marketing training they have been given. The truth is that they too have been deceived.

My firm belief is that we should be eating whole, locally grown fruits and vegetables, grown without pesticides and eating them in a raw state. Cooking does not help most food – mushrooms, tomato and a few other exceptions.

If you must get your nutrition from a drink then juice it yourself and drink within a few minutes of processing. Leave your juice an hour or more and you’ll find that the enzymes will have been at work and much of the nutritioanl value will have already gone.

The best juicers are made by Solo Star, Rhino and Matstone.

Matstone Juicer	Rhino Blender	Solo Star II Juicer