Kids are known for being picky eaters, and they don’t always reach for the healthiest food choices. So having a good nutritional insurance policy in the form of a multivitamin can be a smart choice, one that helps reassure you that they are getting the nutrients needed to grow. While vitamin choices range from liquids to chewables, two of the most popular are multivitamin powders and gummies. But how do kids multivitamin powders vs. multivitamin gummies compare? Does one offer a better nutritional choice than the other? Should both contain the same ingredients, and what ingredients should be avoided? Explore how kids' multivitamin powders and gummies differ, and how the right one can help support your little one’s health.
Table of Contents
- HOW TO CHOOSE A GOOD QUALITY MULTIVITAMIN
- KIDS MULTIVITAMIN POWDERS VS. MULTIVITAMIN GUMMIES NUTRITION: ARE KIDS’ MULTIVITAMIN POWDERS GOOD FOR YOU? ARE KIDS’ MULTIVITAMIN GUMMIES GOOD FOR YOU?
- WHAT'S THE BEST CHILDREN'S MULTIVITAMIN?
How to Choose a Good Quality Multivitamin
Giving your kids a nutrient-dense diet is a daily mission, but even the most adventurous of eaters still consume food grown in less nutritious soil than 20 or 30 years ago.1 Kids are also faced with daily stress,2 which can deplete their magnesium, zinc, calcium, and iron3 levels. Add these to a picky eater who only wants mac and cheese and hot dogs, and you’ve got a nutritional gap to fill.
Choosing a good quality kids multivitamin begins with ingredients, chief among them the sugar content. Kids are consuming more sugar than ever4, so it’s important to look at the grams of sugar in kids' multivitamin gummies, which can cause tooth decay. Other aspects to look for in a quality children’s vitamin include ingredient sourcing, company transparency, and an absence of fillers or binders.
Kids Multivitamin Powders Vs. Multivitamin Gummies Nutrition: Are Kids’ Multivitamin Powders Good for You? Are Kids’ Multivitamin Gummies Good for You?
Kids multivitamin gummies work similarly to kids powder vitamins. They contain vitamins and minerals meant to be absorbed by the body to help meet daily nutritional requirements. But just like snowflakes, no two brands are the same in terms of their ingredients, sourcing, and standards. Still, here are some key points of comparison:
Bioavailability Matters
Kids multivitamin powders, like Kids Good Stuff by Nuzest, contain nutrients that come from whole foods, dried fruits, and vegetables—unlike gummies, whose multivitamins are often fabricated in a lab, which can affect their bioavailability.5 So, are gummies beneficial? It depends in large part on their bioavailability.
Calling All Vegetarians and Vegans
A common question is, how are gummy vitamins made? Often, they use gelatin sourced from pigs or cows. While this doesn’t mean they’re necessarily bad for you, they also aren’t a good match for those on a vegetarian or vegan diet. Because powders don’t require gelling agents, they are more likely to be vegan-friendly, as are all flavors of Nuzest’s plant-derived kids multivitamin powder.
Support Your Oral and Gut Microbiome
Many parents want to understand whether gummy vitamins are bad for their kids' teeth, and if gummy vitamins can cause stomach upset, including gas, acid reflux, and even diarrhea. Since they typically contain between 2 and 8 grams of sugar, more than found in a powdered vitamin, kid’s gummy vitamins are often super sweet. And your little one’s daily sugar consumption can quickly add up when having one (or more) gummies each day. Since children are eating sugar as young as age one,4 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that toddlers completely avoid added sugars.6 Even more troublesome, studies show that by the age of five, kids have a 25% chance of developing cavities7.
When they contain added artificial sweeteners, kid’s multivitamin gummies can upset the digestive system, causing gas, bloating, and diarrhea8. And since they often taste like candy, there’s always a chance your child may eat too many. While doing so likely won’t be cause for emergency aid, it will likely warrant an immediate call to Poison Control Center, and can lead to discomfort ranging from headaches to diarrhea, constipation, and vomiting.
The silver lining is that not all kids' multivitamins contain sugars or artificial sweeteners. Kids Good Stuff is sweetened only with stevia leaf extract, and since it comes in powdered form, kids won’t unknowingly ingest too much, causing them digestive upset.
One Multivitamin, Many Uses
Unlike gummies, which are eaten once, kid’s multivitamin powder like Kids Good Stuff can be used in a wide variety of recipes, making sure-fire hits like this Chocolate Avocado Smoothie or these Overnight Oats. From raw protein bites to pancakes to puddings, kid’s multivitamin powders like Kids Good Stuff not only present nutrition to your kids in their everyday food, they can help kids get involved in their own nutrition by pulling them into the kitchen to play and experiment with recipes.
What's the Best Children's Multivitamin?
When it comes down to it, the best children’s multivitamin is defined by a number of factors, including how the ingredients are sourced and how the product is formulated. Also of value is understanding what key nutrients you want to see in your kids multivitamin powders vs. multivitamin gummies. Iodine, for example, is essential for proper thyroid function in children,9 and it is more readily absorbed from a food source, such as kelp, as opposed to a synthetic source. Do you want your kid’s multivitamins to contain probiotics and prebiotics? Whole foods? Answers to these questions can help guide your search.
Knowing that Kids Good Stuff delivers a dose of antioxidants and superfoods like spirulina and wheatgrass, combined with 11 different fruits and vegetables (on top of a range of nutrients designed to support gut and brain health) is a practical and effective way to give you greater peace of mind. Its high-quality ingredients and delicious flavor options provide the perfect boost of nutrition to meet your child’s health needs.
References:
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/
- https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002059.htm
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7442351/#:~:text=The%20largest%20body%20of%20evidence,on%20calcium%20and%20iron%20concentrations.
- https://www.jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(19)31340-1/fulltext
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2397847317696366
- https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-to-do-when-your-child-eats-too-much-sugar/
- https://www.dentalhealth.org/news/campaigners-look-to-address-childhood-tooth-decay-issue-2020
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5093271/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705354/
