Since the idea of multivitamins rose to popularity, it seems like there's been an almost endless stream of information about them, some good and some bad. It’s not a surprise that it can be hard to know who to trust and what advice to believe.

But when it comes to your health, it’s so important to do your research and really think about how you can get all the nutrients your body needs in the best way possible. That’s why we’ve put together a list of multivitamins fiction vs fact.

Fiction: Multivitamins can make up for a poor diet.

It would be great if we could eat whatever food we wanted and just take a multivitamin to get all the healthy goodness we needed. But that’s just not the case…

Good practice is to always do your best to have a balanced, varied diet. While multivitamins can help you fill in any nutritional gaps you may have, it’s still super important that you live a healthy lifestyle. This includes, but is not limited to, eating a wide variety of nutritious food, getting enough sleep, exercising regularly and making sure to top-up on your self-care (whatever that means for you). 

Supplements can help complement a good diet, but can’t make up for a bad one.

Fiction: Multivitamins are a cure-all.

Multivitamins aren’t magic, despite what some might want you to believe. They can’t change and improve your health overnight. However, they can be beneficial in the long term. When you fill in a nutritional gap within your body, you might not necessarily feel any different right away. But the benefits of a lot of supplements are in the long game. 

Take Vitamin D, for example. We know that getting enough Vitamin D is vital for keeping our bones strong and reducing the risk of osteoporosis in the future. It’s one of the reasons that Vitamin D is a supplement that many people in the UK take, especially in our grey, winter months as it can be hard to get the recommended levels from the sun. But if you take Vitamin D supplements, you won’t be able to feel the effects it has on your bones immediately, in fact you won’t even be able to appreciate the benefits in the long-term. But that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. That’s because a lot of the time, supplements like Vitamin D and multivitamins should be viewed as precautions, not miracle-cures.

Fiction: The quality of multivitamins is always the same.

If you read our blogs regularly, you’ll know that we’re big advocates of making sure to do your research before purchasing any supplements you might want to add to your diet. This is due to the simple fact that not all supplements are of the same quality. 

It’s important to choose a company that you can trust, that have done their research and that holds your health as a priority. Taking too much of certain vitamins and minerals can be dangerous, so you need to make sure to do your research and choose the supplements and multivitamins that are right for you.

Fiction: Multivitamins are useless.

If we look at the diets of most people today, it makes sense why multivitamins are necessary. While it would be great if we could get all the vitamins and nutrients we need from the food we eat, that’s simply not the case in today's climate. Studies have found that 90% of people don’t get the proper nutrients through food, which is especially true with the increase in processed foods over the past 40 years. Even if you actively look to have a healthy, varied diet, no one can be perfect 100% of the time. In fact, many people can fail to meet the recommended intake of a number of important nutrients due to dieting, poor appetite, busy schedules and more. 

As we’ve mentioned in a previous blog, soil depletion has had a major impact on the intake of nutrients from our food. As modern farming techniques have allowed for the over-production of food, the amount of the nutrients in soil has been steadily falling, which means the amount of nutrients in our food has been steadily falling as well. In fact, to get the same amount of Vitamin A that a single orange provided our grandparents, we would need to eat eight oranges! Multivitamins can help supplement the vitamins and nutrients that can be hard to get from our food, no matter how balanced and varied your diet is.

And let’s not forget the groups of people that might need a little extra help on top of a balanced diet, including those that have cut out dairy and meat from their lives - they’ll need to make sure to top up on their Omega 3s and Vitamin B12 with supplements. 

It’s clear that multivitamins aren’t useless, but remember - they should be used to help complement a healthy lifestyle, not replace one!

The Naturality Lab has a wide range of multivitamins and supplements that have been scientifically formulated to provide the best quality:

Multivitamins plus Iron and D3

Delivering 24 essential vitamins and nutrients plus iron, The Naturality Lab’s Multivitamins perfectly complements any diet and fills potential nutritional gaps. It delivers 100% of the Recommended Daily Allowance of all the necessary nutrients, and a little extra of a few water-soluble vitamins (Vitamin D3, B12, B6 and Folic Acid) that our nutritionists recommend that are easily lost in food processing. We also give you 100% of your daily iron needs to help prevent anaemia and keep you full of energy. Best of all, we managed to pack all this goodness into one small, vegan tablet. 

Who Is Our Multivitamin Especially Good For? 

Women aged 50+: Multivitamins become even more important as we get older (especially for women). As we age, oestrogen levels decline causing the midriff bulge to appear. The result is that for women it seems as if we are on a permanent diet which can result in the restriction of the number of nutrients we are consuming. It’s even more important that we eat balanced meals as we get older, but also that this is supplemented with a good quality multivitamin.   

Being low on key nutrients can sap our energy and make us prone to health problems. Dairy is one of the first food groups to be cut when on a diet, but bone mass peaks at around 30-35 years of age and after that women can become at high risk for osteoporosis. That’s why our multivitamin contains high levels of Calcium and Vitamin D3 so your bones are fully supported. 

Vegans & Vegetarians: This animal-friendly supplement contains a wide range of vitamins and minerals, including the vitamins B12 and D, calcium, iodine, iron and zinc – nutrients that can be challenging to get in sufficient quantities from a plant-based diet. Being low on these nutrients can lead to symptoms such as fatigue, poor immunity, headaches and thinning hair in the short term, but can also raise the risk of more serious problems in the long term, including anaemia and bone fractures.