My travel buddy has trouble swallowing tablets, he actually has to chew supplements and vitamins instead of swallowing them whole. And you can just imagine how awful some of them actually taste.
So when we were on the lookout for some multi-vitamins in Waikiki (we were both sick with a head cold) of course he loved the idea of the chewable variety because then he could chew them up without having to put up with a nasty flavor.
So we bought this brand of vitamin called ‘Multi Chewable’ from Nature Made which taste a lot like an orange sweet.
I was always a bit suspicious of these vitamins because nothing healthy could possibly taste that sweet and organgy. I felt like I was eating confectionery, not a vitamin tablet. BUT, stupidly I didn’t bother looking at the ingredients list until we’d gone through the whole lot.
Out of curiosity [too late] I discovered that the sweetness in the vitamin tablets was actually from the addition of fructose (fruit sugars), xylitol and aspartame. Now fructose I’m not too happy with because it has a very high GI, xylitol is okay because I haven’t found anything bad about it yet …but aspartame is a chemical that I swore would never pass my lips again for as long as I lived. And here I was, having just chugged down half a bottle of vitamin tablets that were packed full of that evil stuff.
For those of you who are unaware of the dangers of aspartame (which mind you can also be found in diet pop, chewing gum and confectionery), you can read my brief article about it here: DO NOT eat these foods. I think the title of the article speaks for itself.
I am absolutely appalled that a company selling health products has added aspartame into their vitamin tablets. I’m annoyed with myself for supporting a company that uses aspartame, and I’m even more annoyed that I purchased from a company which appears to be either oblivious to the fact that this chemical is poisonous to our bodies, or doesn’t seem to care.
From now on I’ll be checking every single ingredient on all vitamins and supplements that I buy, and so should you.
Fran
Fran Kerr is the founding editor of High on Health. To cure your acne, sign up to Fran's FREE acne cure mini-course or download her latest how to guide, Eat Away Your Acne.
6 responses ↓
Do you think that the fact that it had those bad ingredients made the vitamins have no effect at all or do you think that yeah, even with the bad ingredients it has helped you? But dont get too mad with their “false advertisement” .I spoke with someone who works for kellog’s ( the cereal company) today and they said that people try to sue them all the time for their high amounts of sugar even though they claim its totally healthy.So really everyone is tricked sometimes and I’m sure that if you were to go check the ingredients of some other stuff now ytou’ll see the same thing happening.Its some businesses make their living, they trick their consumers.
Hi Kevin, aspartame is way worse than sugar, trust me.
I don’t know if it had any effect, to be honest I’m feeling a lot better with this new vitamin I’ve bought. But this new one is much better quality overall so that’s not suprising.
Wow! Thanks Fran for the heads up. I was just going to go out and buy whatever mens multivitamin I could find but now for sure I’ll be reading the back label.
ugh! I KNOW what you mean! I also found out some time ago that my vitamins had some atrocious ingredients, so I’ve been having a time finding some that are decent. I’ve been doing without. I’ll let you know if I find one…
Hi Fran. OK, so I stopped taking certain supplements b/c they had so much scary junk in them. Then I noticed my seemingly benign vitamins had milk in them!!! That’s crazy! I’m vegan, so I immediately stopped taking them. I also hesitated to start taking the vegetarian vitamins I found in my grocery store’s health section b/c they were mega-doses. I mean 700% of this and 400% of that. I don’t know if there’s any harm in that, but hey, I really believe you can have too much of a good thing!
BUT THEN, I found Nature’s Plus Love Bites, which are chewable heart-shaped “children’s” vitamins, but if you look at the back, they have mega-doses of what a child actually needs, but just about right for an adult. So, yes, I’m taking a children’s vitamin…
OH, and I forgot to mention, the vitamins are sweetened with fruit juices. No aspartame here! And it also includes rose hips in the ingredient list, which I guess is another sweetener, as it comes from fruit, but I have heard it helps heal acne scars. Anyone heard that before, too?
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