By Previnex®
When you pick up a supplement and take a peek at the ingredient label, you obviously get an idea of what’s inside the bottle. You see amounts and daily percentages of each vitamin, mineral and substance that make up the supplement. Unfortunately, many of us trail off before we get to the part of the label that lists the “other ingredients.” The problem is that this causes you to miss those unwanted ingredients that many supplement companies try and slip by you, hoping you don’t notice.
While you probably have never even heard of “vitamin excipients,” chances are you consume them every day. They are the “extra” ingredients in your supplements that are listed at the bottom under the label of “other ingredients.”
Here we will take a look at some of the unnecessary “other ingredients” that are found in supplements and how they may be quietly harming our health.
Flavoring
More common in the chewable and gummy varieties, adding flavoring is a way that supplement companies try to make their product more enticing. Adding a sweet or fruit flavor can help get children and adults alike to take their vitamins. While a natural flavor is ideal, many vitamins include sweeteners like aspartame, saccharin or high fructose corn syrup. Not exactly what you think of when you think health supplement.
Fillers
One of the most common excipients or “other ingredients” is fillers. These bulking agents are in our supplements to act solely as a sizing agent. They are what create bulk in many of our vitamins and can be made from a range of elements. There is much controversy over what fillers can and should be used. With supplements essentially being unregulated by the FDA, what goes inside your supplement can sometimes be suspect. While a select few companies actually want everything natural and have the consumers best health interests in mind, most others use controversial ingredients, like hydrogenated oils or titanium dioxide. This means that some of what you are consuming when you take your daily vitamin doesn’t even need to, and shouldn’t, be there if promoting health is the main goal.
Coloring
Another common added ingredient is coloring, whether artificial or natural. Many companies opt to add color in order to make the product more appealing or even to give it brand identity. A vitamin marketed towards adult women may be given a pink hue, while the men’s variety might be offered in blue. The problem with added color is the source of the pigmentation. While some companies use natural ingredients like fruit extract to add color, most others use food-coloring dye that can cause unwanted effects in the body simply because it’s cheaper.
Binders
While a binder’s purpose is probably self-explanatory, what gives it the binding property can be questionable. While keeping a vitamin intact is important, it is equally important to pay attention to what components hold your vitamins together in their pill form. There are safe, natural binders that have limited impact on the body. But there are also cheaper options that some experts believe can be a sensitivity ingredient to many people.
Preservatives
Because many vitamins are expected to sit on the shelves of the store or your medicine cabinet for some time, preserving them becomes important. There are natural preservative options like vitamins A or C and amino acids like cysteine and methionine. There are also less desired preservatives that are all too often added to your supplement, like parabens, benzoates, sorbates and sulfites. Also worth noting, the preservatives BHA and BHT have come under fire by the FDA and many health organizations as having potential negative effects on our health. While they were once considered safe, this may not be the case.
Coatings
A coating or a glaze on a vitamin is one way manufacturers make it easier for people to swallow their pills. This solution to the problem of comfort while taking your vitamin can create it’s own list of problems. In a study published in the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers sampled a portion of pills on the market. They were looking at what coats a variety of pills to make them easier to swallow. They found that 10 to 20 percent of the pills sampled contained two types of plasticizing chemicals. This means that along with your vitamins and minerals, you are ingesting a daily dose of plastic. While the study did not investigate the outcome of prolonged exposure to these excipients, the impact of plastic exposure over time can be dangerous.
Disintegrants
Once you have swallowed your pill, its next task is to be broken up in the body. To aid in this process many vitamins and supplements contain disintegrants to help break down the pill and begin to release the supplement ingredients. There are a number of agents that have been approved by the FDA for use in OTC and prescription medications. However, since supplements do not need FDA approval, some disintegrants housed in cheaper vitamins are less than desirable. For example, many supplements use sodium starch glycolate as their major disintegrant. Because this ingredient is made from starchy foods, it can have negative effects for people who have gluten intolerance.
We know that what we don’t know can certainly harm us when it comes to what’s in our supplements. If we overlook the ingredient label that lists the components other than major vitamins and minerals, we might overlook potential dangers.
Pay close attention to that commonly overlooked portion of the label to make sure that you are getting the best possible supplement for your health.
