Multivitamins
Worth A Look
| SC Quality Benchmark for Multivitamins The product should provide a minimum of 100% RDA of all essential vitamins. The delivery of this specification in a one-a-day format for standard tablets and capsules is desirable to promote long term compliance. |
Multivitamin products should be designed to deliver 100% RDA of the 12 essential vitamins. As a category, they are less popular than multivitamin and mineral products, as the latter clearly offer the same as a multivitamin plus a multimineral component for very little extra money.
Overall, a multivitamin and mineral is normally a better nutritional choice, as well as a better value choice. The advantage of leaving minerals out is that products can be made to be much more palatable, hence many multivitamins are in chewable or jelly form.
Quality.
Of the products reviewed here, only one provided 100% RDA of all 12 essential vitamins – Chewable Multivitamins (Holland and Barrett). Most of the others inexplicably omit Biotin. Apart from this, all products are very similar, with the effervescent product from Boots and the soft chews from Bassetts the only others which are noticeably different. The higher-rated products are likely to deliver the expected benefits associated with intake of RDA levels of the essential vitamins. Because the quality is very similar, the form of the supplement (e.g chewable tablet) and value for money criteria assume greater comparative importance.
Value range
The value for this group is very variable, with 100% RDA of 11 of the 12 vitamins costing from £0.014 to £0.15.
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