The ABCs of Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

Written by: Geneva Collins

Who could blame you for feeling like you're drowning in alphabet soup as you peruse the vitamin displays at your pharmacy?

Row after row of As, Bs, Cs, Ds and Es--in varying dosages, combined or solo, synthetic and natural, encapsulated, coated, time-released and chewable. And we haven't even touched on minerals.

Ever wonder who decides just how much thiamine we need in our lives? The National Academy of Sciences establishes the Recommended Dietary Allowances for vitamins and minerals. (The government-mandated Daily Values you see on food and supplement labels are derived from the academy's RDAs.)

The NAS has issued three reports since 1997 with new recommendations for calcium, B vitamins and antioxidants. Four other reports, ranging from macronutrients to phytochemicals, are expected to be finished in the next few years.

To make matters even more confusing, the academy is replacing "RDAs" with "Dietary Reference Intakes," to convey upper intake limits as well as minimum recommendations. If you feel a little dizzy trying to keep up with the changes, you're not alone.

Food Sources are Best
Nutrition experts advise consumers not to get hung up on numbers--milligrams of calcium and micrograms of folate--and to concentrate on the bigger vitamin and mineral picture.

"The important thing to remember is that vitamins and minerals are team players; they don't work alone. That's why it's easier to get them from food. The combinations nature provides have a synergistic effect," said Edee Hogan, a Washington, D.C.-based spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.

One easy rule to remember is that water-soluble vitamins--the B complex family and C--need to be replenished daily, said Hogan. Your body takes what it needs from the food you eat and excretes the excess. Fat-soluble vitamins-- A, D, E and K--can be stored in the body. It's not as crucial to have them daily, but it also means consuming too much over a long period can be harmful.

Know Your Vitamin Needs
There's no "one size fits all" when it comes to vitamin needs: A 45-year-old woman might require more calcium than her 6-year-old grandson--but maybe not as much as the child's teenage babysitter. The NAS divides its recommendations into 10 age groups, from birth to over age 70, as well as by gender. Pregnant and nursing women have separate recommendations.

Susan Bowerman, M.S., R.D., and assistant to the director at UCLA's Center for Human Nutrition, recommends that you shop for a multivitamin that fits your nutritional needs (i.e., a women's formula with iron if you're in your 30s, a children's multivitamin with extra calcium for your milk-hating 9-year-old).

"The problem is people have a tendency to zero in on one specific nutrient, like it's going to cure all our ills. But it's antithetical to what's in our food," said Bowerman. "A carrot has beta-carotene, sure, but it also has many other carotenoids in it. If you're taking a beta-carotene supplement, you're essentially creating a relative deficiency of all the other carotenes."

Good Advice
In terms of natural versus synthetic formulations, Hogan and Bowerman agree that your body usually can't tell the difference (natural E is an exception; it's better assimilated and is retained in body tissues longer, Bowerman says), and there's no advantage to buying an expensive vitamin brand over a generic one. Click here for more tips.

"In a perfect world, people could get everything they need from food. But people don't eat perfectly. That's the role of supplements," said Bowerman. "But supplements absolutely cannot make up for a junky diet."

Geneva Collins has written extensively about nutrition topics for many consumer publications, including Nutrition Action Healthletter, The Female Patient and Atlantic Lifestyles, and has created healthy-eating fact sheets for the National Institutes of Health.