The Truth About Multivitamins
Choosing the best multivitamin for you can be a daunting task as there are many misleading claims and often times, a bit of trickery in the marketing.
In order to talk about what you do need and want in a multi, we first need to dispel with some of the deceptive marketing currently out there.
Men & Women Multivitamins Are Different, Right?
It makes logical sense that the best multi for you would be the one marketed for your gender.
However, this is one of the biggest lies in the supplement industry.
I have yet to find a multivitamin which actually had ingredients which were helpful to men over women or vice versa.
Some multi’s which are marketed as “gender specific” do not even bother to put anything in their formulations which would actually differentiate themselves from any other general vitamin on the market.
Even the multi’s which do incorporate actual gender specific herbs in their products still fail to provide anything of substance because of the amounts they are putting in their product.
For example I pulled up the ingredients on perhaps the most popular men’s multivitamin sold today…
One of their key male oriented ingredients is Saw Palmetto.
To start with I have to mention that Saw Palmetto has never been shown in human case studies to be more beneficial than taking a placebo. (study)
Next we need to look at how much Saw Palmetto is believed to have a potential benefit. That starts at 320 mg daily.
And exactly how much is in this ultra popular men’s vitamin? There is no way to know exactly because the amount has been hidden in a “proprietary blend”.
However, we can tell with a little bit of math and deductive reasoning that it’s less than 44 mgs!
What this means for you is at the end of the day you are paying for an ingredient which may not only be ineffective at full dose but is most certainly ineffective at less than 15% of the clinical dose.
This brings us to our next fact.
Proprietary Blends Are a Ripoff!
People often see “proprietary blend” on the label and think there must be some special formulation to it.
However the reality is the reason companies do this is to hide just how much of any ingredient is in their product.
Let’s look at another extremely popular multivitamin as an example.
Proprietary Organic Blend – 200mg
Beetroot, Carrot, Black Currant, Blueberry, Broccoli, Cranberry, Kale, Pomegranate, Raspberry, Spinach
There are 2 considerable problems with this formulation:
1. Divide the Amount of Ingredients by Total Dose
In this 200 mg blend they have 10 different ingredients. If all ingredients in the blend are equal, it means you are getting a miniscule 20 mg of each ingredient.
For beetroot the clinically effective dose starts around 500 mg and can go up significantly depending on what benefit you are wanting to derive from it.
Taking just 20 mg of beetroot is a complete joke.
2. The Ingredients are Not Listed In Order of Amount
On a food nutrition label, the highest dosed ingredient is listed first. For example if sugar is listed first, then you know there is more sugar in the product than any other ingredient.
Naturally you would tend to think the same would be true of your supplements and if that were so you could logically come to the conclusion there may be 110 mg of beetroot in our above example and just 10 mg of the other 9 ingredients.
However, the supplement industry is not regulated the same way as the food industry so in actuality there could be as little as 1 mg of beetroot followed by 1 mg of every other ingredient except for say cranberry of which there is 190 mg.
Why would they do that?
- Most supplement companies don’t think you are smart enough to divide the “total mg” by the “amount of ingredients” and realize just how little value is there.
- They can simply fill up their “proprietary blend” with the cheapest ingredient in the list, all while legally claiming there are several ingredients because they included a fractional amount of it.
Only Looking At Vitamins & Minerals Is Old Science
Of course we need an ample amount of traditional, old school vitamins and minerals everyday to stay healthy.
But the truth is, in the modern world we get the vast majority of these in our daily foods.
Even “white bread” which is basically terrible for you, has been fortified with vitamins and minerals to help make up for the lack of quality foods many people consume on a daily basis.
In addition to that, most multivitamins are so outdated in their formulations and lack true substance so they often compete for your business by offering extreme amounts of various vitamins to the point there may be potential negative side effects. (study)
Do you really need 300, 400 or even 500% more than the RDA (recommended daily allowance)? Not likely.
What To Look For In A Multivitamin?
While it is certainly good to ensure you aren’t deficient in any vitamins and minerals, and a standard multivitamin can help with that, we now know there are many more factors which greatly support our day to day health such as:
- Phytonutrients
- Healthy Nitrates
- Antioxidants
- Purine Alkaloids
- Catechins
And that is only scratching the surface!
Discussing the complexities of each one of these is beyond the scope of this article but in short and simple terms these are the microscopic nutrients that may help to:
- Increase Blood Flow (study)
- Boost Cognitive Performance (study)
- Fight Disease (study)
- Ward of Cancer (study)
- Improve Heart Health (study)
- Lower Blood Pressure (study)
- Decrease Inflammation (study)
- Protect Against Free Radicals (study)
And so much more!
Superfoods & Whole Foods Are What You Want
Superfoods and whole foods are the best way to get these crucial nutrients but these are hard to get on a daily basis in the quantity we need them.
Foods like:
- Beetroot
- Pomegranate
- Kale
- Spinach
- Brown Seaweed
- Raw Organic Cacao (Dark Chocolate)
- etc…
The Only Way To Get It Is Green Drinks, Or…
For decades the only way to consistently get this level of nutrition was by consuming “green drinks” which really are an extremely healthy and great way to supplement your diet.
The problem is, if you have ever tasted a truly healthy green drink and not one so loaded with sugar and/or artificial flavors you might as well be drinking kool-aid…
Then you already know they tend to taste like a combination of chalk and grass!
So while I believe in the concept of green drinks and do believe if you can stand the taste on a daily basis, they are a great way to go…
They do not do you much good if you are not drinking them every single day!
Next Level Superfoods Multivitamin
This is exactly why I created our Next Level Superfoods Multivitamin!
It is the only clinically dosed superfoods multi on the market giving you both the traditional vitamins and minerals as well as whole and superfoods in full and clinically dosed amounts (no proprietary blends, no token ingredients), your body and mind need to perform at its peak.
In fact, I personally challenge you to show me another multivitamin on the market today that comes anywhere close to delivering the extremely high amount of nutrition and quality that we do in Next Level Superfoods.
Best of all you get it in 6 easy to swallow tablets instead of having to force down a disgusting green drink you dread taking every day.