Why do vitamins taste so bad?

This thread by Eutychus reminded me of a question that’s been on my mind for a while now:

Why do vitamin pills taste so goddamn awful? Every vitamin pill I’ve tried makes me wanna puke! It’s not the sort of thing that’s going to make me feel like taking them on a regular basis.

So, dear Dopers, what’s the go???
Max.

Before someone tackles the heavy duty biochemistry, let me give a simple answer. Much of the bad taste comes from the B vitamins. Open a can of _B-rich) brewer’s yeast and inhale. Ugh.

Vitamin E pills don’t have a lot of taste, comparitively and IMO. Ditto A. Vitamin C have that characteristic acidic taste. I doubt most people would find the minerals that offensive, but there’s no hiding the B vitamins.

Wow, that would be the all-time quickest reply to any OP I’ve created.

Probably TMI:

So, bearing in mind observations in Euty’s thread, if my pee is very yellow, can I then assume that I don’t need the extra vitamin B that’s found in these foul-tasting pills?

I wonder if they even make multivitamin pills that don’t have vitamin B?
Max.

Yellow pee usually indicates that you’re either dehydrated and your body is conserving water, or you ate a whole lotta protein and your body is trying to get rid of it.

Or you ate a lot of vitamins… as that is also a well known effect.

Though I think it’s the beta carotene and/or vitamin A that causes the neon-yellow pee effect.

Righto, so getting back to the original question - is the high level of vitamin B the reason vitamin pills taste so bad?

Just buy those tasty children’s vitamins, that’s what I do!

Flintstones are intensely sweet and not meant for the weak mouthed. The off brand children’s vitamins are less sweet and easily and tastily chewed.

Tastily? Ugh, it’s early, I’m gonna let that one go today. :slight_smile:

No, it’s a safety measure. Growing up in a pharmaceutical family, I can tell you if any medicine tasted sweet, the risks and incidence of accidental ingestion by children are too high. Not to mention adults, you have to know it’s medicine.

The name ‘Vitamin’ comes from Vital Amine - because it used to be thought that vitamins would all turn out to belong to a group of chemicals called amines (essentially derivatives of ammonia) - this isn’t the case - some vitamins aren’t, but the name stuck.
However, a great many vitamins are amines and being related to ammonia, they are often smelly and/or unpleasant to taste. AFAIK, amines are also responsible for fish tasting fishy.

Could the “people don’t believe it’s good for you unless it tastes bad” be affecting the manufacture at some level, also?

Viactive, the makers of the calcium chews, has come out with a multivitamin chew. You might try that.

Sevastopol: But Flintstones vitamins, as Ravenous Lady said, are very sweet. I remember that I really liked taking them. (It wasn’t quite as rare and wonderful a taste experience as the rich banana flavor of amoxicillin suspension, but it was still something to look forward to.) I understood that I couldn’t have more than one (or whatever the recommended number is), but I can see that some children might want to eat large numbers of them. In that case, is there some sort of limit on the size of the package or the contents of the vitamins so that a child will not be seriously harmed if they take most of a bottle? Only a few of the ingredients in multivitamins are dangerous in overdose (the fat-soluble vitamins – A, D, E, and K – iron, and maybe a few others like selenium), but it still can’t be good to take too many. Perhaps it’s more important that adult multi-vitamins taste foul, since the doses are much larger than in children’s multivitamins, and taking several pills would be much more harmful to a child.

Broomstick: Vitamin A is a good candidate because it’s yellow in color. Vitamin E is also pale yellow. But these vitamins are fat-soluble and less easily eliminated in the urine than, say, vitamin C or the B-complex vitamins. (They can be eliminated but would require some processing first.) The B-complex vitamins folic acid and riboflavin, for example, are both slightly yellow in color, and perhaps it’s one or more of the B vitamins that causes the effect.

Though those may contribute to yellow urine in some cases, I think you’ll find that they are not the primary cause. Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) is a potent fluorescent yellow ("-flavin" is from the Latin for yellow) used as a pigment and food coloring.

Vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin, and AFAIK, is generally stored in the liver and other tissues, and is not readily excreted per se. There are several conditions that can cause increased direct excretion of Vitamin A or its conjugates, such as infections, especially urinary tract infections but generally it must be slowly metabolized to smaller molecules or complexed with fatty acids, and would not add appreciable yellow color to the urine [I would expect these byproducts to be excreted through the bile into the feces, but I do not recall having specifically read that this is true). Body storage of Vitamin A can be medically significant, because it is toxic at high accumulations (as is Vitamin D, the other major fat-soluble vitamin), and can cause complications if high doses are taken early in pregnancy

Beta carotene, a precursor of the retinols and retinoids, including Vitamin A. The retinols include the primary visual pigment (hence the name, from “retina”, and one of the signs of vitamin A deficiency: night blindness). It also plays a role in the bone and tooth formation, and its derivatives play a role in the control of cell division. This last is important because they can actually be pro-carcinogens (helping to cause cancer) in some cases [e.g. beta carotene supplementation decreases cancer in nonsmoker, but increases it in smokers; topical Retina-A creams are used to heal cosmetic skin damage, but can help cause skin cancers in high-risk individuals – which is why it’s only available by prescription]

Beta carotenes only became a part of the multivitamin mix in the past 10 years or so, after its protective efffects against cancer were widely publicized (and since they aren’t the best choice for everyone, not all multivitamins include them even today). However, yellow urine caused by brewers yeast (a common early vitamin supplement) has been noted for over 100 years, long before today’s multivitamins, and especially beta carotene enrichment could have been a cause.

On a purely personal note, though I haven’t conducted specific tests, I have not noticed that carrots or tomatos [rich in beta carotenes] appreciably color my urine. Reports from others would be welcome, however, since I am avoiding starchy foods right now, and root vegetables like carrots are rather starchy.

As for “foul-tasting” – that’s subjective. I’ve taken brewer’s years as a supplement at various times in [and since] my youth, and also do a fair amount of baking. I find the yeasty smell of B-vites --very prominent in multivitamins-- pleasant and even reassuring. I often add yeast to soups or sauces for complexity and richness, and everyone seems to like it. It’s all in how you perceive it.

I haven’t read Euty’s thread, but I have noticed that when you take a multivitamin can have a very significant effect on absorption. For example, a family member recently gave me a bottle of high dose vitamin B supplement (I’ve learned to smil and say thank you, whatever my opinions. Most of my family has been to medical school, though some didn’t complete it, but since I’m the only one who also has a background in molecular biology as well as medicine, I often find their views on biochemistry and physiology… shall we say, “quaint”)

Since I had them on hand, I took a tablet, knowing I’d “pee out” anything I didn’t need, and got the most livid yellow urine I can ever recall having, even though I have been hydrating heavily (4+ L/day – a New Year’s Resolution) have therefore been voiding large volumes of very dilute urine for the past two months.

The next day, I took it 30 minutes before a long heavy workout, and my urine was only a pale to moderate yellow, even though it was otherwise evident that my post-workout urine was much more concentrated than my ‘resting’ urine the previous day. [Yes, I often use myself as a walking experiment.]

I’d often wondered how much timing affected absorption, but I never expected to see such a clear and readily reproducible demonstration. I don’t consider this to be science however, it’s just an interesting anecdotal observation.

It takes a lot of carrots - a lot! But they will eventually turn your pee roughly the same color that those B-complex vitamins do.

Yes, but by that point, I’d imagine that you’d also get a yellowish or orangish tint to the skin (but not the sclera or “whites of the eyes” , which is useful in distinguishing it from the yellow of jaundice). Beta carotenemia is usually harmless (you sometimes see it in infants who are just being started on solid foods, and are ODing on mashed squash, pumpkin and carrots), but I imagine it’d be more disconcerting than the yellow urine.

How much is “a lot” of carrots in this case? Just so I have some idea. I ask because I have gone through periods when I’ve eaten “a lot” of carrots (e.g. I used to munch tomatoes by the bucketful from my garden; and munching on carrot sticks was once a classic trick to lose a few pesky holiday pounds – not that it ever worked for me. The pounds always stayed on until around March, when I stopped eating those starchy carrots)

I’m not doubting you. It makes perfect sense that beta carotenes should color the urine. It’s just that a single large carrot has more beta carotenes than a typical vitamin tablet, so I wouldn’t expect an MVI to do what a carrot couldn’t. I was just curious when the effect kicks in (and I’m sure there’s a story there!)

Probably not; I think it’s more the case that the vitamins themselves just have strong and penetrating flavours/odours; the problem is manufacturing a capsule or coating that is soluble in the digestive system, yet impervious to the transit of the aroma molecules. Easier just to try to mask it with a very strong fruit flavour, but probably not as effective.

I was a child at the time, could that have anything to do with it? I was told that they were good for my eyes (fat lot of good it did me) and I ate them by the bagful for a couple months. I peed bright yellow, but did not, IIRC, turn orange. I think I’d remember my mom freaking out about an orange child, but hey - maybe not, I never wore a helmet on my bike, I ate things off trees, all sorts of things that weren’t good for me, maybe orange wasn’t such a big deal. :slight_smile:

One factor I didn’t see mentioned here was that you need to take vitamins with food, or at least a glass of milk. Popping those large vitamin “horsepills” on an empty stomach usually does make one a bit nauseous.

Centrum was on sale, so I bought some of that instead of my usual One-a-Day. It was only after taking Centrum that I realized that all vitamins don’t need to taste like ass. I’m never buying one-a-day again. They taste like a used suppository.