Vitamin pills for kids: short-cut to good health or a danger?

Vitamin Pills for Kids

The essential nutrients that your body needs can be put into pills, and they are very valuable for some people, in medically-defined situations: when there is proved deficiency or risk of deficiency, when capacity to absorb vitamins is impaired e.g. with coeliac disease or after bowel surgery.

Vitamin pills may be useful for kids who don’t eat properly balanced diets, such as extremely fussy eaters, but a vitamin pill cannot deliver the same range of nutrients as foods can.  They can also be dangerous.

Fat soluble vitamins tend to accumulate in the body so high dose supplements could potentially cause toxicity.  This is known to happen with Vitamin A and D, but only at extreme levels of intake.

Because it is known that people with poor diets have more heart disease, strokes and cancers, many people go out and buy vitamin pills, especially the so-called antioxidant vitamins, A, C and E.  But, when the research was properly done, in huge numbers of people, it turns out that taking these extra vitamins actually caused MORE heart disease and earlier deaths!

Medical advice is therefore not to take extra vitamins.  It is not clear why supermarkets and so-called ‘health-food shops’ are allowed to continue to sell vitamin pills without prescriptions.  Many people will have heart disease as a consequence, and a legal challenge is probably required.

The best course, without doubt, is to avoid vitamin pills, in fact avoid illness and the need for any pills if possible, and to Eat Balanced!