Why does Vitamin C always come in chewable form?

Factual Questions
1

Other than multivitamins and natural sources, I have noticed that Vitamin C tablets always are in chewable form.

  1. Why is this?

  2. Why are the others not so readily available this way?

2

I’ve seen nonchewable vitamin C. See The GNC web page, for instance (link goes to list of nonchewable C tablets).

3

It doesn’t always come in chewable form. I don’t like chewing pills and so I never use chewable vitamin C.

Vitamin C pills tend to be larger than other individual vitamins mostly because we need larger amounts of vitamin C than any other vitamin.

I take 500 milligram pills. Most other vitamins are dispensed in micrograms or even International Units, which are really small. If the quantity of drug you’re taking is a thousand times more than anything else, naturally its pills will be larger as well. People don’t like swallowing huge pills, so they are made available in chewable form. But that’s part of the market, not a rule.

4

So is it possible to buy chewable forms of other vitamins? I know E is an oil, so not too likely, but what about the others?

5

(I’m assuming we’re ignoring Flintstones vitamins, but I don’t know why.)

Well, I’d imagine most other things taste pretty nasty. Zinc, for example, is very bad-tasting. Whereas Vitamin C is just somewhat sour.

6

I would avoid ordinary (e.g., ascorbic acid) chewable Vitamin C.

Over time these acidic chewables might erode your tooth enamel.

7

Citric acid is used to make sour candy sour. So (depending on your POV) vitamin C might not just taste sour, but embody the concept.

8

But vitamin C is ascorbic acid, not citric acid. Or am I missing something?

9

The reason is because you cannot overdose on Vitamin C. Your body excretes that which it doesn’t use. You could eat the entire bottle of those chewable thingies and be just fine.

So, if you’re going to make a vitamin in a chewable form, vitamin c would really be the only safe one. For example, too much vitamin E can cause brain damage. Why make chewables anyway? Because:

  1. They’re different (marketing);
  2. People think if they eat a lot of them when they have a cold (or feel one coming on) they won’t get sick;
  3. Kids like them (more like candy than a yellow pill);
  4. Some think they’re a healthy alternative to candy because it says “vitamin” on it. They are loaded with sugar.

I do realize there are chewable multivitamins for kids (i.e. “Flintstones”) but there have been plenty of lawsuits over kids overdosing on those because they are like candy. Still, some kids cant/wont swallow pills, so they just stick a lot of warning labels on it, etc.

The bottom line is that it would be very impractical to make a single-vitamin chewable, because for most vitamins you don’t want more than a certain amount. It’s a liability thing.

But your question is “why is C always in chewable form?”

It’s not. I see bottles of Vitamin C pills all the time. Any grocery store or pharmacy will have them (lots of brands, too).

10

You can get hard candy with vitamin C added.

11

What Kalt says is partially true but requires some more explanation.

There are two forms of vitamins, those that are water-soluble and those that are fat-soluble.

Vitamin C and the entire B complex of vitamins are water-soluble. Water-soluble vitamins are not stored well by the body, and excess amounts of them will get flushed away in the urine.

Fat-soluble vitamins are A, D, E, and K. They get absorbed into the fats of the body and can stay there indefinitely. They also get concentrated in the liver, which is why you hear stories (probably true, though I can’t give a cite) about arctic explorers dying from eating too much polar bear liver. But build-ups of fat-soluble vitamins can happen elsewhere and can be dangerous.

But, again, you need far less of these vitamins in the first place, so a small pill can easily handle them.

The actual warning on Flintstones vitamins is also different from what Kalt implies:

I’d need a cite to believe that overdoses related to fat-soluble vitamins was a cause of any child’s death. The vitamins do contain aspartame, which has been the subject of many lawsuits, but that’s a different issue.