High Potency Multivitamins & Minerals
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| SC Quality Benchmark for High Potency Multivitamin and Minerals This section is difficult to benchmark, but assessment is based upon: 1) Presence of all essential vitamins in addition to Iodine, Iron and Zinc being at minimum 100% RDA level., with Calcium and Magnesium being at a minimum 20% RDA level. 2) Number of vitamins and minerals with higher than RDA concentrations, together with a judgement on the benefits of the level of increase over the 100% RDA level. 3) Degree of expected compliance. One-a-day is easier to take over the long term than 3 a day. 4) Additional ingredients are considered desirable only if the basic high potency multivitamin and mineral criteria as set out above have already been met. Any further component should be appropriate to the supplement and present at meaningful levels. |
Some reputable nutritional experts believe that optimum levels of many vitamins and some minerals lie significantly above the RDA values. For instance, there is a good supporting body of evidence that the consumption of the Department of Health guideline of five portions of fruit and vegetables every day actually provides between 200mg and 500mg of Vitamin C. This would imply that the optimum level of Vitamin C intake is within this range or even higher, contrary to the government RDA of 60mg.
As such, very high potency multivitamin and mineral products are often available in the own-brand ranges of health practitioners such as Holland and Barrett, although some can now be found within better known consumer brands. With these products’ levels per daily dose of vitamins between 2 and 100 times the RDA, depending on the vitamin.
Although these products are very high dosage, they are extremely unlikely to have any negative or harmful effects – the question is whether the extra levels offer any additional benefits.
Quality
All of the seven products reviewed here are of high quality and would be expected to deliver the short and long term benefits associated with high intake levels of the essential vitamins and most minerals. The difference between products in this category is often the omission or low level of one or two ingredients.
Nevertheless, the product from Aliment satisfied most criteria for a high potency multivitamin and mineral and also provided significant levels of several antioxidants.
Value
The value range for these products (containing an average of three times 100% RDA of most vitamins per dose) varied from £0.03 to £0.26 per each 100% RDA dose.
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