Children

Winners Explained

The SC Benchmark for Children’s Multivitamins Must provide a minimum of 50% RDA of all 12 essential vitamins per daily recommended dose. Note: The inclusion of vitamins at levels greater than 50% of the RDA was viewed as a positive by the SC Expert Panel. The SC Benchmark for Children’s Multivitamins and Minerals Must provide a minimum of 50% RDA of all 12 essential vitamins Must provide a minimum of 50% RDA of Iron, Iodine and Zinc Must provide a minimum of 15% RDA of Calcium and Magnesium Note: The inclusion of vitamins at levels greater than 50% of the RDA was viewed as a positive by the SC Expert Panel.

A good diet is arguably most important during childhood, as evidence is mounting that good nutrition during the first 12 years of life has positive implications on health as an adult. Supplementation of vitamins and minerals is vital to optimum nutritional intake.

Most children’s multivitamin and mineral products aim to provide half of the adult %RDA. The assumption is that the other 50% comes from diet. The assessment of value in our survey is based on provision of 50% of the RDA at the recommended daily dose. Absence of any vitamins, as well as levels lower or higher than 50% RDA have also been taken into account in the SC assessment.

Vitamin and mineral products for children under 3 years are always presented as liquids or syrups. For children over three years of age, chewable tablets, or more recently, jelly-type sweets. All of these potentially overcome the problem of getting children to take the traditional tablet and capsule forms.

Quality.

In this category it is important to distinguish between "multivitamins" which provide only vitamins and "multivitamins and minerals" which aim to supply both groups of nutrients. Obviously, the second category gives a wider range of nutrients and so could be considered the better option, but minerals are difficult to put into liquid products so multivitamin and mineral products tend to be limited to chewable tablets.

Both of these sub categories were very variable when it came to quality, as many products failed to provide all vitamins and / or minerals, various products also provided greater or lesser amounts than 50% RDA. None of the products in either section of this category was considered by the SC Expert Panel to provide a sufficient spectrum and level of nutrients to be awarded five stars. Many of the chewy jelly-type products provide a minority of the essential vitamins – typically only vitamins A, C, D and E – and this needs to be taken into account when a choice is made.

Multivitamins and Minerals

Kids A-Z (Sanatogen) provided the widest spectrum and best levels of vitamins and minerals overall, further to this they are quite palatable. Animal Chews with Calcium (Holland and Barrett) is also of good quality. The Jelly Baby Bears (Healthspan) have a wide spectrum of nutrients and are very nice tasting and good value.

Multivitamins

The multivitamin syrups are all very palatable, with the Multivitamin Syrup from Boots the best specification overall. All of the jelly type products from Boots, Bassetts and ASDA are very palatable but their spectrum of vitamins is a little limited. The Boots Gummy Bear product has the edge here.

The product from Abidec is worth considring for very young infants.

Value range

The value in these categories was difficult to assess. Eventually, it was decided to assess on the cost of each daily dose, regardless of content, so slightly less weight should be given to value products in this category and more to product quality. The value range for multivitamins and multivitamins and minerals is between £0.03 and £0.16 per daily recommended dose.