If you’ve never questioned the potency of your vitamins, or even their safety yet…
Then, Holy Worst-Case-Ever of “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter! -Hey; you got your peanut butter in my chocolate!”,Batman!
It’s just like the time when Spider-Man started wearing the black “Venom” suit. Do good is doing bad???!?!?! —Snap!!
In a recently released study by Consumerlab.com, it turns out that some vitamin products may not be delivering exactly what their labels say.
Out of 21 brands sold across North America,
Only ~1/2 of those vitamins delivered the potency their labels indicated.
In fact, some brands delivered less than advertised, more than advertised, or in one case, you got a bonus of Lead. – More than 10x the amount allowed by the State of California.
As vitamins & supplements aren’t required to undergo the same strict testing required of drugs, the report by ConsumerLab is particularly useful.
In addition, the vitamins tested were Dailies. So, whatever potency or safety problems came with them were almost guaranteed to be repeated long-term exposure! Yikes!
Lucky for us, a few of the larger, well-known, average, widely-sold brands did just fine on all scores. There was also no real slam-dunk correlation between price and potency. (yay!)
Follow the links to more complete information, including dissolution time, etc.
Note: This story smacked of a similar one about the potency of Saw Palmetto supplements, citing wildly varying actual vs. stated concentrations across brands. (-CVS fared pretty well.)
->So, if you’re going to be taking any vitamin or supplement for a serious purpose, large dosage or long duration, -Definitely do some digging. Let the ConsumerLab study remind you that the differences can be huge, even in expensive products.
-Also: Ignore Industry Lobbyist Dude’s fatuous vapor-quote in the MSNBC article. -The average person is not going to be able to notice toxicity or deficiency in just about any vitamin or mineral until it’s having quite serious effects.
Photo Credits: “Lead”, by Carlos Sillero
Links:
• Source: MSNBC
• More Coverage: CSPI: Food Watchdogs. arf!
• Source Study: Ah CL, if only ye were cheaper -or free!
• Hat Tip: (the post was in the works, but also suggested by (thx!) Dan )
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