How do you get a child to take their vitamins? Hide them in a sugary lollipop or gummi bear. As we're seeing in today's marketplace, more and more candy vitamin products are becoming available for children, and their sales are skyrocketing.
But is it good nutrition? To answer that question, you have to ask another. What's worse: having nutritional deficiencies, or consuming the refined carbohydrates found in the candies? In other words, these candy multivitamins do give kids some nutrients they need, but aren't they also harming them with the high-fructose corn syrup and added sugars?
The answer, in my opinion, is that the vitamins added to these foods are not very helpful to begin with. Makers of candy multivitamins tend to use the cheapest vitamin ingredients available, and those are usually synthetic vitamins that have marginal health benefits.
To make matters worse, none of these nutritional supplements contain phytonutrients that are essential to human health, even if they're not required by the federal government. So even if kids chew a hundred gummi bear vitamins, they're still getting zero phytonutrients.
The real answer here is that kids should be taking real supplements like Earth's Promise from Enzymatic Therapy. These can be blended in tiny amounts in kids' meals and smoothie drinks, along with stevia (instead of sugar) to sweeten them up. Furthermore, parents need to stop caving in to the whining of their children and set some ground rules for nutrition. I often hear parents saying, "But my child won't EAT that!" Yes they will, if you'd stop rewarding their tantrums with lollipops. Most parents have actually trained their children to throw tantrums as part of the process of earning ice cream of cake. It's pure Pavlovian psychology.
The bottom line to all this? Skip the candy vitamins and feed your kids superfoods, whole foods and -- if they want something sweet -- fresh fruit or a stevia smoothie. And find a way to get the good stuff like chlorella into their diets, too (even if that means rewarding them for swallowing whole food supplements).
About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing site that has now grown in popularity. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email Marketing Director,' currently runs the NaturalNews email subscriptions. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. He's also author a large number of health books offered by Truth Publishing and is the creator of numerous reference website including NaturalPedia.com and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. His websites also include the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the innate healing ability of the human body. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
Have comments on this article? Post them here:
people have commented on this article.
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Email this article to a friend
Share this article on: 
Now Available from 
