Why do vitamins taste so bad?

[DougC]

• • • I remember being told that it was because medicines and vitamins in general tasted bad so that if little kids found them, the kids wouldn’t eat them all thinking they were candy.
      ~

[vagabond26]

@Carnac_the_Magnificent

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.

Funny that you should blame it on the B vitamins, though I’m sure if you tried to actually chew one up and eat it it wouldn’t taste very good, I have resorted to taking individual vitamin B tablets and gels in order to prevent that horrid after taste from the multi vitamins. I always heard this was caused by the iron and I believe it is true because the only multi vitamin I ever found that did not have a nasty after taste was pre natal vitamins that did not contain iron.

As for the yellow pee, assuming you are not dehydrated, it is defiantly a side effect from taking vitamins and your body eliminates the excess.

[bob_2]

While it’s true that we need vitamins to survive, it’s also true that too much of a good thing can kill you.

For the answer you have to turn to what are called “systematic review papers”. This is where independent scientists gather up all the available data and re-analyse it to answer big questions.

Here’s what a couple of them say:

“We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention [of diseases of any kind]. Beta-carotene and vitamin E seem to increase mortality, and so may higher doses of vitamin A. Antioxidant supplements need to be considered as medicinal products and should undergo sufficient evaluation before marketing”. (See references below).

Just to be clear - “increase mortality” - that means they’re killing you. These are powerfully bioactive compounds but they’re not regulated in the same way as drugs. Whatever you think about the regulation there should surely be a warning on the pack if there’s data saying they’re bad for us.

Don’t trust the science done by the people who are trying to sell them to you and don’t assume that if some is good more must be better.

It’s like beer. Or coffee. Or computer games. Goldilocks was right about things needing to be just right.

The problem with taking too many vitamins

[jz78817]

Beta-carotene and vitamin E seem to increase mortality, and so may higher doses of vitamin A.

wonder how long they thought about that before writing it.

anyway, as the late Mitch Hedberg once said, “All vitamins are ‘chewable,’ it’s just that most of them taste shitty.”

[constanze]

Is there a special reason why you are eating vitamin pills instead of food with vitamins in it? Because if your doctor found lack of vitamins in your blood, wouldn’t he have prescribed you a specific vitamin medication, pharmacalogically approved?
If you are taking them without doctors advice, however, every advice from nutritionists and doctors I’ve read in the past decades has been:

an average adult in western country doesn’t need extra vitamins or minerals; it’s how companies make a bunch of money from middle-class, educated but easily scared people selling products not-regulated like medication (are you sure that the amount of Vitamins claimed on the package is inside?)

putting 10 or more vitamins, all artifically produced, inside one pill, without any of additional stuff that accompanies them in natural food, has shown to have poor resorption into human body. (Additionally, human bodies vary individually on absorption).
One example: lipidphiles vitamins like beta-carotin need some fat to bond to (so if you eat a carrot, put some fat-based dip on it).
Another example: in elderly people, to prevent osteoporosis, doctors have described high dosage calcium pills, because many elderly have problems with milk. Turned out that the resorption rate of calcium pills is less than 50%, but calcium in mineral water or other sources has a much higher rate.

If you actually do have a lack of vitamin - C before cold season (once you have it, it doesn’t help), smoker, pregnant women (folic acid), menstruating woman (iron) - tablets are short-term. Long term you should change your diet to include more veggies, fruits and seeds/ nuts (for minerals), because that’s far healthier for you and better to resorb.
There are lots of tables and posters out there where you can look up which food contains which vitamins, so even if you hate broccoli or fish oil, you can eat sth. else.
Real food also makes it very difficult to overdose, while tablets make it very easy. If you overdose on watersoluble (like Vitamin C) you just piss your money away, but fat-based (like Vitamin A) you can get sick from overdose just like from lack of it. (and it takes time to show up, and symptoms are not easy to spot.)

[bob_2]

@jz78817

wonder how long they thought about that before writing it.

anyway, as the late Mitch Hedberg once said, “All vitamins are ‘chewable,’ it’s just that most of them taste shitty.”

Can you explain what you mean by this comment please.

[Ludovic]

@Maxxxie

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?

@Harmonix

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.

I know this is late, but urine that is yellow due to a lot of vitamin B is differently yellow from urine that is yellow due to dehydration or protein. The latter is more brownish and the vitamin B is more pure yellow (“neon”-ish even, to quote another poster.)

Does that type of yellow urine indicate enough vitamin B? I was wondering that myself since I need to take vitamin B supplements. I normally take whole-spectrum vitamin B supplements, but one time, all I could find was sub-lingual liquid that only had B-12. No yellow urine.

So I wonder if the yellow urine is caused by a different B vitamin than B12 which would mean that the color is an indication that you have sufficient levels of that B vitamin, but doesn’t say anything about your B12 levels.

[jz78817]

@bob_2

Can you explain what you mean by this comment please.

beta carotene is a pro-vitamin; your body converts what it needs into Vitamin A. so there didn’t seem to be a reason to call the two out separately.