Children's vitamins - nutritional insurance or waste of money?
Categories: Toddlers, Preschoolers, Kids 5-7, Kids 8-11, Teens & Tweens, Eating & Nutrition
Many of today's parents grew up with the daily query, "Did you remember to take your vitamin?" and would dutifully trudge back to the kitchen and pop that Flintstone chewable.
Today there is a vast ocean of choice when it comes to children's vitamins. You can choose between omega3, immunity support, zinc & echinachea, extra iron, or extra C in liquid, swallow-able, or chewable in the traditional chalky version, gummy-bear, or bubblegum variety forms.
But are vitamins still an necessary part of a children's daily diet? A British website did a study on children's multivitamins and found only five out of 14 brands of supplements contained all 12 essential vitamins and stated that some have little more nutritional value than candy.
Even experts seem to disagree whether multivitamins are necessary for all children. The American Academy of Pediatrics only giving supplements if your pediatrician advises you to, but the same organization also says a daily vitamin isn't likely do any harm, unless it exceeds the recommended daily allowance amounts of a vitamin or mineral.
With so many of today's common food and beverages being fortified (Who could have imagined that calcium could be added to orange juice?!) even finicky children are probably getting a lot more vitamins and minerals than parents realize. We're pretty lackadaisical on the multivitamin front in our house. What about you?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
c_rousseau05 8-25-2008 @ 1:37AM
Truthfully we don't bother with vitamins. Vitamins are really for people who don't always get their daily nutritional needs met (eat out a lot, skip meals or don't eat right) but as long as you eat healthy and make an effort to get all your vitamins from food then you really don't have to worry. In my family I am the only one to take vitamins because I breastfeed my daughter so I take a prenatal pill daily.
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susan allport 8-25-2008 @ 10:44AM
Thought you might be interested in this short omega-3 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIgNpsbvcVM
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Nova11 8-25-2008 @ 1:25PM
I like to give my boys their "gummie vitamins" about a couple times a week. They are only 3-1/2(twins) and I had noticed that they werent eating any veggies while at daycare.(she gives me a daily report with all the things they ate, etc) She serves the kids lots of protein, calcium, and fruits...but no vegetables at all. So i try to make sure they have veggies with dinner and I give them their vitamins too.
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