These days, the options for dietary supplements are virtually endless. Whatever substance you want to ingest, you can find it in gummy form. Omega 3? surely. Vitamin C? absolutely. iron? calcium? zinc? Yes, yes, and yes. We have peach collagen rings and strawberry/watermelon fiber rings. There are also brambleberry probiotic gummies and worm gummies with a “tropical flavor” that will make you feel “upbeat.” There are libido gummies and menopause gummies. There are gummies that claim to boost your metabolism, strengthen your immune system, and strengthen your hair, skin, and nails. For children, transformers multivitamin gummy my little pony Multivitamin gummies.
I was able to continue. A quick search for gummy vitamins on the CVS website returns over 50 results. This is the golden age of gummies, and that may seem like a great thing. Who wouldn’t rather eat a peach ring than take a pill? But if the idea that something healthy tastes exactly like candy seems too good to be true, that’s because it is.
While gummy supplements are a relatively new phenomenon, gummy candies are not. Starch-based Turkish Delight has been around since the late 18th century. In England in the 1860s, some of the first gummies were widely known as “unclaimed babies” (because they were shaped like infants, there were clearly a lot of unclaimed babies at the time). . In the 1920s, German confectioner Hans Riegel founded Haribo and created gelatin-based gummy bears that are still consumed around the world today. But it took another 60 years for Haribo gummies to reach American shores. In the decades that followed, gummy candy became ubiquitous, appearing in earthworms, frogs, sharks, snakes, watermelons, donuts, hamburgers, French fries, bacon, cola bottles, bracelets, band-aids, brains, teeth, eyeballs, and more. It took almost every form imaginable. , genitals, soldiers, mustaches, Legos, and just like in the old days, kids.
But it wasn’t until the late 1990s and early 2000s that the supplement industry began experimenting with gummies. Its driving principle was not new. As Mary Poppins said, “A spoonful of sugar makes a difference.” flintstones Multivitamins have been around since 1968 in hard, chewable form. Even if they are better than pills, they basically taste like sweet, vaguely chemical chalk.
Conversely, gummy vitamins are almost indistinguishable from the snacks on which they are modeled. Just like the Sour Patch Kids, you can also pop the Men’s Multi in the movie. (Also, Starburst gummies, Skittles gummies, Jolly Rancher gummies, just about any non-chocolate candy is now sold in gummy form.) That’s probably why it became so popular, according to the watchdog group Consumer Lab. President Todd Cooperman says. A site that reviews supplements. When he founded his ConsumerLab in 1999, gummy supplements almost didn’t exist. Gummy vitamins for adults didn’t hit the market until 2012. Nina Pucci, a scientist who currently formulates gummies at the food and drug consulting firm Knectel, says that three out of four of the gummies she designs are supplements rather than candies. . Gummy supplements are everywhere. These are a rapidly growing industry valued at over $7 billion, and by 2027 that number is predicted to double.
But the appeal of gummy supplements is also a cause for concern. It turns out that the reason it tastes as good as candy is because it contains, on average, about the same amount of sugar as candy. Cooperman said early gummy supplements were basically just candy sprayed with vitamins. Since then, they have come a long way. Now, the active ingredients are carefully incorporated into the gummies themselves by scientists like Puf, in a way that preserves the flavor and consistency of the gummies as much as possible. However, the essential nutritional components have not changed much. The average vitamin gummy contains about the same amount of sugar as one Sour Patch Kid.
Just because you have a little extra sugar doesn’t mean you’re done. However, there is also a risk of overdosing.Especially for children, it is important that medicines and supplements have no taste too much Good, Cora Bruner, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington, told me. Many vitamins and nutrients taken in supplements can be toxic if taken in excess. It’s not so bad that your child won’t want to eat it, but it’s not so delicious that they’ll eat too much, so you have to strike the right balance. Most gummy supplements don’t seem to pass the latter test, but they’re not without results. The number of calls to poison control centers each year due to pediatric melatonin overdose has increased by 530 percent over the past 10 years. Part of the reason, an expert suggested to me last year, is that the hormone is increasingly available in gummy form. The number of overdosing on multivitamins is also on the rise.
The risk of overdosing can be greatly reduced by simply being careful to keep gummies out of reach of children. The bigger problem, Cooperman said, is that gummies simply have a less reliable delivery mechanism than the alternatives. He says that because gummies offer less protection from heat, light, moisture and other contaminants, the semi-liquid, semi-solid state of gummies can contain more vitamins and other nutrients than traditional tablet or capsule forms. The compound breaks down much more quickly.
To compensate, supplement manufacturers often include far more substances in their products than advertised on the package. Some amount of overdosing is expected with all supplements, but the margins for many gummy supplements are huge. “Gummy vitamins were the most likely form to contain far more ingredients than listed,” ConsumerLab wrote in a 2023 review of multivitamins and multiminerals. . Of the four gummy supplements examined, three contained almost twice the expected amount of the relevant substances, while the fourth contained only about three-quarters.
A recent analysis of melatonin and CBD gummies found similar results. Some contained as much as 347 percent of the amount of these substances listed on the label. Because the FDA typically does not regulate supplements as drugs, these wild fluctuations are accepted as not applicable to actual drugs. (In 2020, the FDA approved the first-ever investigational new drug application for a gummy drug, but no such product appears to be on the market.) Gummies are not an option,” says Cambridge, Somerville, Mass. Peter Cohen, a physician at Health Alliance and lead author of the melatonin-CBD study. In general, overdosing on supplements is not as dangerous as overdosing on prescription drugs, but as Breuner pointed out, many supplements taken in sufficient excess can still be toxic. When I asked Cooperman if he had any advice for people trying to get through this situation, his answer was simple. “Please don’t buy gummies.”
Perhaps the rise of gummy supplements was inevitable. The supplement industry has become so large in part because it can promote products such as boosting the immune system and supporting healthy bones without being subject to the strict regulatory demands placed on pharmaceuticals. Supplements are blurring the line between food and medicine, and gummy supplements, designed and sold on the premise that something healthy can and should taste as good as candy, are blurring that line. It just makes it even more vague. Mr. Cohen, for one, thinks this distinction is worth maintaining. Calcium supplements should not be reduced as easily as Haribos. It may be a bitter pill to swallow, but not everything tastes like candy.
