During a recent Costco visit, I perused the vitamin aisle and came across supplements that many of the families and patients I see use. It gave me the idea to provide a general review of top points often discussed with families who have children on either of these two popular supplements.

Please note - I am not recommending to give or not give any of these supplements. 

Firstly,  the Smarty Pants kids formula multivitamin / Omega 3 fish oil gummy vitamin.

Did you know that 4 gummies (a serving as per the product label) provides 100mg of omega 3 fat? This equates to 11% of the omega 3 needs for children aged 4-8 years. Also, it does not contain iron.

No daily multivitamin in gummy format for kids contains iron.

There is a gummy iron supplement on the market that I have recommended in my practice, but I will go through that in an upcoming blog post (just in case you missed me going through it on my Feeding from the Heart IG stories)

And then onto the Flinstones Complete chewable vitamin. 

It's confusing- but despite this product being labelled complete it is in fact not complete as it does not contain iron. If you want a Flintstones brand chewable vitamin with a small amount of iron to contribute towards the RDA (recommended dietary allowance) then looks for the variety labelled as Flintstones plus iron. 

I hope this information is interesting and more importantly helpful in helping you understand what is in, and perhaps what is not in a vitamin that you may be giving your child.

But if you feel you would like more information that relates to your child and his/her intake and needs -  then a consultation can be of use. Interested to book? Click here. 

~Brigitte McRae, RD