jd111
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« Reply #45 on: November 24, 2009, 10:12:25 pm » |
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^ Costco has good pricing on liquid vitamins.
Here's a summary I copied from Consumer Reports:
Multivitamins What to avoid, how to choose
TRIED AND TRUE Stick to mainstream multivitamin brands. Our tests found that those sold in cut-rate discount stores are often substandard. You can generally rely on major brand-name and store-brand multivitamins, our past tests have found. But what about the super-cheap multivitamins in close-out and dollar stores?
Our November 2004 report found problems with other products in those stores, so we tested their multivitamins. The results indicate that buying those pills at such outlets is a gamble not worth taking: Nearly half of the 18 tested brands failed to contain the labeled amount of at least one nutrient, and several did not dissolve adequately.
But there are more ways to waste your money on multivitamins than just buying unreliable brands. Some of the roughly 75 million Americans who buy the pills may not need them at all. Others spend extra for megadoses, exotic nutrients, or special formulations that may be unnecessary; some of those high doses may even be harmful.
Here’s a comprehensive guide to making safe, sensible, economic choices about multivitamins, including our recommendations for the optimal doses of the 18 essential nutrients, plus the amounts that could be dangerous.
DO YOU NEED A MULTIVITAMIN?
Multivitamins are clearly beneficial for certain groups who have special nutritional requirements. Those include:
• Women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant.
• People with gastrointestinal disorders or other nutrient-depleting illnesses such as diabetes or cancer.
• Strict vegetarians (unless they’re knowledgeable about how to get all the necessary nutrients from food).
• Those on restricted diets.
Whether other people should take a multivitamin is less certain. It’s probably not necessary if you eat a healthful diet, meaning plenty of fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products, and modest amounts of fish and low-fat meat and poultry. Indeed, getting your nutrients from food rather than pills offers noteworthy advantages. Food contains beneficial fiber as well as phytochemicals that may not only help prevent disease but also interact usefully with one another. And consuming plenty of nutritious foods leaves less room in your diet for unhealthful choices.
However, research has shown that most Americans don’t eat the recommended diet. As a result, modest nutritional shortages are common, especially after age 50. For example, even older people who eat a healthful diet may lack sufficient amounts of intrinsic factor, a protein produced by the stomach that’s needed to absorb vitamin B12 from food. And they may not get enough vitamin D because the need increases with age and their ability to synthesize the vitamin in response to sunlight declines. Some evidence suggests that taking multivitamins can fill such potential gaps and might reduce the risk of developing certain diseases in that age group as well as in younger people who don’t eat nutritiously.
Note that some people may need additional supplements. Multivitamins typically contain far less than the recommended daily intake of calcium. Some older people, depending on their diet and sun exposure, may need more vitamin D than most multivitamins provide.
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