Are Your Children Getting the Vitamins They Need?
Younger children may be getting enough nutrients from diet alone
Before you serve up the gummy vitamins, chew on this:
Some children may not be getting the nutrients they need most from their multivitamins, some may be getting too much of certain nutrients, and others may not need a multivitamin at all.
Do they really need a children’s vitamin?
Eating a healthy diet goes a long way towards preventing nutritional deficiencies, but how much do we really know about which nutrients kids are getting enough of in their everyday diets and which ones we need to supplement?
That’s the question that researchers from institutions including Tufts University and the National Institutes of Health attempted to answer in a study published in the Journal of Pediatrics. The study looked at the diets and supplement use of 7,250 children between 2 and 18 years old to see if taking supplements helped fill in nutritional gaps, or if it led to excess intake of certain nutrients in kids who already had good diets.
Following are the percentages of children who took dietary supplements:
Here’s what the study showed:
Still wondering what to do?
The take-home message from this study is that younger children may be getting enough of most nutrients from diet alone, but may benefit from boosting intake of certain nutrients, like calcium and vitamins D and E.
Older children might benefit from taking a multivitamin-mineral supplement, and making sure that they get enough calcium and vitamin D.