I stopped by a friend’s house last weekend and watched as her 6-year-old son finished off his breakfast of sugary cereal and fruit juice with a bright, neon-colored multivitamin. She was so busy rushing around to get everything going for the day that there just wasn’t enough time to sit her down and explain that what she thought was a healthy way to give her child the nutrients he needed could actually be harming his health.
Most Children Do Not Get Enough Nutritious Food
According to the Centers for Disease Control, childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years. This fact brings with it another alarming statistic: This is the first time in the history of modern civilization that the life expectancy of children is expected to be lower than that of their parents.
It’s understandable that parents would want to do whatever possible to ensure the health and well-being of their children. That often includes filling in the nutritional gaps caused by a poor diet with vitamins.
Get this: Many of the children’s vitamins on the market today could contain poisonous additives and are not any healthier for your child than candy.
Are you unknowingly poisoning your children?
Popular Children’s Vitamins Do Not Fill Any Nutritional Gaps
One of the primary selling points of children’s vitamins is that they fill in nutritional gaps. It gives parents the erroneous belief that all they have to do is make sure their children take vitamins and they’ll get all the nutrition they need despite their diet. This is a lie. Most popular store-bought vitamins are synthetic. This means they were created in a laboratory and do not come from a whole food source.
If you give your children synthetic vitamins (also called “test tube vitamins” – yuck), it’s the nutritional equivalent of giving them a wax apple to snack on. These supplements contain no live enzymes and are usually loaded with toxic additives and preservatives.
Cyrstalline or ‘extracted’ vitamins contain only a small amount of enzymes and are usually loaded with indigestible binders and fillers. These types of vitamins have been shown to contain very little nutrients and have been shown to be neurotoxic to your child’s developing brain.
Each time you hand them a chewy vitamin, it’s like giving them a brightly-colored poisoned candy.
Poisonous Additives in Your Children’s Vitamins
Let’s take a closer look at the poisonous additives in your children’s vitamins:
- Aspartame
Aspartame is one of the worst toxins you can put into your child’s body. It has been clinically-proven through dozens of studies to be highly neurotoxic and contribute to the development of over 92 different reactive symptoms. This synthetic sweetener has also been shown to increase risk of cancer. In laboratory studies, aspartame administered in feed before birth and throughout life span, has been shown to induce both lung and liver cancer in mice.
- Sorbitol
Sorbitol is sugar alcohol and has been shown to induce gastrointestinal complaints in many children. The commercial source of sorbitol is genetically modified corn. Genetically modified food products contain Round-Up, a gut-destroying toxin that has been shown to interfere with normal digestive, immune, and neurological function.
- Artificial Coloring Agents
Does your child exhibit some of the symptoms of ADHD? Part of those symptoms may be caused by artificial dyes and coloring agents in your children’s vitamins. Research has proven that dyes such as Red #40 and Yellow #5 have been shown to cause hyperactivity, aggressiveness, learning impairment, and insomnia. These coloring agents have also been linked to the development of cancer.
- GMO Corn Starch
Corn starch is a common binder used in children’s vitamins. Since 85% of the corn produced in the United States is genetically modified, it contains toxic pesticides that can do permanent damage to your child’s health. Genetically modified foods have been shown to alter DNA and RNA structure, which silences normal gene expression and can contribute to cancer.
- Cupric Oxide
This tenorite mineral is an irritant that has been shown to cause damage to your child’s endocrine and central nervous system. Cupric oxide has been shown to cause the heavy metal accumulation associated with autism spectrum disorder.
- Ferrous Fumarate
Ferrous fumarate is an industrial mineral that can be fatally toxic if consumed in large quantities. It is associated with iron overload disorder and irreversible liver disease.
- Hydrogenated Soybean Oil
It is estimated that 90% of the soy produced in the United States is genetically modified. Hydrogenated soybean oil is a trans fat that has been associated with mood swings, violent behavior, risk of coronary artery disease, diabetes, stroke, and fatty liver disease.
Your Natural Alternatives to Store-Bought Vitamins
Children who take store-bought multivitamins are no healthier than children who do not take them. Just as you cannot outrun a poor diet, you also can’t “out-vitamin” a poor diet. The best thing that you can do for both your health and that of your children is to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet.
This means slowly weaning off processed foods and investing in more organic vegetables, fruits, nuts, seed, beans, legumes, meat, poultry, fish, and healthy fats such as coconut oil and butter. For some, this can be a trying process as junk food has become a way of life. Though it may be challenging at first, it’s the sure-fire way to permanently improve your health.
Vegetable juicing is another option you can use in conjunction with a healthy diet to fill in any nutritional gaps. Organic juicing extracts the nutrients directly from vegetables and fruit and delivers an easy-to-digest dose for the entire family. A combination of carrots, apples, spinach, and oranges taste great blended together and can be served each morning with breakfast in place of store-bought juice.
If you do want to stick with vitamins, be sure the multivitamin you select for your child is 100% organic and derived from a whole food source. Just remember, even the best multivitamin in the world will not replace a whole-food diet so be sure to invest in this first for the continued improvement of your health.
Resources:
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm
http://www.rense.com/general37/ddly.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1474447/
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/04/study-reveals-broad-dangers-of-trans-fats/
