Nowadays, a gummy has become a favorite of young people’s regimen. There is a wide range of dietary supplements on the market, no matter what you want to supplement, omega-3, vitamin C or calcium, iron and zinc, you can find the corresponding gummy form. Young people who are “giving up sugar” at the same time are enjoying another kind of functional gummy.
Vitamins added beyond the tolerable limit
Gummy vitamins also have a place in the market of maternal and child health products. Many young parents are worried about their children’s diet is not balanced, nutrient deficiencies, coupled with the role of advertising and marketing, will often give priority to the child to supplement the gummy vitamins. Vitamin gummies and tablets of vitamins compared to more like candy, palatable, children love to eat but also the nutritional supplement, the best of both worlds for parents. But is taking functional gummies really effective? Can they be used as a long-term nutrient supplement for children?
Since gummy vitamins do not fall under the purview of the Drug Administration, it may be difficult for manufacturers to accurately determine the amount of vitamins to be added, as compared to ordinary chewable vitamins and tablets.
In 2015, Canada’s Chewy Dewey Group recalled two vitamin D gummies because the products tested contained almost four times the amount of vitamin D indicated on their labels, and the intake recommendations for children aged 8 and under were above the daily tolerable limit. The daily intake of vitamin D is 10 mcg for children 1 to 18 years of age; the maximum tolerable intake for children under 4 years of age is less than 20 mcg; and the maximum tolerable intake for children 4 to 7 years of age is less than 30 mcg. Excessive intake of vitamin D in children under 8 years of age can lead to vitamin D toxicity, resulting in headaches, nausea, vomiting, constipation, loss of appetite, dehydration, and weight loss.
Taste is good but doesn’t solve nutritional problems
The processing of soft candy needs to meet the conditions of acidity and high temperature, for the vitamins that are not acid-resistant and cannot resist high temperature, there is a problem of content degradation. For example, vitamin A, vitamin D3, pantothenic acid are not acid-resistant, and vitamin A, vitamin B1, niacin, vitamin D3, vitamin K and there is a low melting point is not resistant to high temperatures, not only the processing of the above vitamins will be a significant loss of content, the subsequent storage period in the shelves, but also serious degradation of the problem. Therefore, through the gummy such processing technology to supplement vitamins, itself can be ingested to the vitamin content will be greatly reduced, parents should not take for granted that the child as long as the vitamin gummy, can be the nutritional problem solved.
In addition, some of the vitamin raw materials themselves come with a bad taste, such as B vitamins mostly bitter, which requires the addition of a variety of sweeteners, flavors and other additives to mask the taste, so that people from the taste of better acceptance, overconsumption may increase the child’s risk of obesity, dental caries and other health problems.
A wide range of vitamin gummy products on the market, each product contains various types of nutrient content and categories are different, the child’s daily dietary intake of how much nutrition, but also the lack of which nutrients, the need to supplement a small amount of each of these are required to go through the evaluation of a professional nutritionist test, and then go to the targeted and reasonable supplementation, blindly follow the trend is not desirable.
Most functional gummies have an exaggerated reputation
Many young people are easy to be some of the “science network article” fooled, often into the probiotics and hyaluronic acid gummy, blueberry lutein gummy, niacinamide whitening gummy in the minority. Hyaluronic acid gum, for example, in some social platforms, “grass” text, especially highlighting the “good for the skin”, “chewing out the hydroluminescent muscle” and other words, however, at present, the hyaluronic acid edible product However, the efficacy of hyaluronic acid edible products is not yet conclusive. In general, after oral hyaluronic acid, large molecules of hyaluronic acid will be digested and decomposed by the gastrointestinal tract, first converted into small molecules of sugar, and then absorbed by the human body, the absorbed small molecules usually enter the blood circulation, and will not penetrate into the skin. Many seem to come with health products “aura” of functional soft candy, in fact, “name over reality”.
In our daily life, as long as we eat a variety of food, reasonable combination, it is possible to get enough vitamins through the diet. In addition, the premise of vitamin supplementation is that after careful examination and evaluation, it is necessary to supplement the situation, combined with the guidance of a professional nutritionist, choose the appropriate preparation products, according to the recommended supplementation dose for supplementation.