Organic Multi Vitamins: Getting Everything You Need in One Vitamin

Vitamins are necessary for turning food into energy our bodies can use, for bodily functioning and even for creating DNA, our genetic blueprint. The best way to get vitamins is from whole food, because it also contains other healthful nutrients too. Whether to spend extra for organic multivitamins is an individual decision.

Organic proponents say vitamins from organic food are of higher quality, as is the food itself. They cite studies showing that organic crops, including spinach, carrots, potatoes and oranges, may have higher amounts of vitamin C than conventionally grown crops, for example. The easiest way to make sure you’re not deficient in any of the vitamins is to take a daily multivitamin. When it comes to organic multivitamins, read the label carefully. If a product says it’s organic, contact the manufacturer and ask about its organic certification.

The Need For Vitamins

We can’t live without vitamins and yet we humans can’t make most of them ourselves. And we often don’t get all the vitamins we need from the food on our plates. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, taking a daily multivitamin is probably a good idea for most adults even though the vitamins most likely to be lacking are folate, B6, B12, D and E. The Mayo Clinic says vitamin supplements could be needed for people who eat fewer than five daily servings of fruit and vegetables, eat only once a day, are vegetarian, eat fewer than 1,200 calories daily, or have a health condition that requires extra vitamins. Pregnancy, smoking and heavily drinking alcohol all increase the need for vitamins. To make sure you’re getting all the vitamins you need, the Mayo Clinic suggests a basic multivitamin.  Most experts say multivitamins should have levels of the individual vitamins at or near the government’s Dietary Reference Intakes guide. Super-sized vitamin doses should be avoided, because that can cause health problems. For example, too much vitamin C can cause diarrhea.

Selecting an Organic Multi Vitamin

Ronnie Cummins, president of the non-profit Organic Consumers Association, contends that organic multivitamins are worth the extra expense because they’re derived from organic food. Organic food must pass muster with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program standards to be certified as such. But Cummins also says there’s plenty of misleading labeling in the marketplace. He urges consumers to learn how to read labels and check if the multivitamin is really organic. If a product says it’s organic, he suggests consumers ask the manufacturer to show their organic certification for it. Organic vitamins can be labeled as “100 percent organic”, “organic” or 95 percent from organic ingredients, and as “made with organic ingredients” if it has 70 to 95 percent organic ingredients. If only some ingredients in the vitamin are organic, they can be listed on the label.