Multi-vitamins & Multi-minerals

[Tom Treutlein]

I've heard before that a lot of store brands, as well as popular brands like "Centrum" have a low "bioavailability". Is this true? If so, are there any tests done to show what vitamin and mineral supplements are ideal in terms of the body's ability to uptake them?

And adding to that, assuming someone has no specific defecits and just needs overall vitamins and minerals, is there anything a multi-vit and multi-min don't cover, that would need to be addressed? i.e., any additional nutrients?

 

[baby a]

I used to have a few studies on bioavailability of differently priced multi-vitamins that I used for a paper I wrote, I can't find them right now. But basically, there is no evidence to support buying higher priced multis. As for taking additional vitamins/minerals, you probably don't have to worry about it because any good multi will cover any trace minerals you aren't getting from your diet, and your majors should really already be covered from the food you are eating.