You try your best to give your kids adequate nutrition. You pack their lunchboxes full of carrot slices and cubed fruit. You don’t give them dessert unless they eat their vegetables. You don’t let them have Happy Meals very often. But try as you might, you just can’t be sure that your kids are getting the right nutrition. Schools offer questionable food choices, friends trade lunches with each other, after-school programs pass out fattening snacks, and your kids have friends whose parents don’t feed them healthy foods.
So you give your kids a multi-vitamin every day, and you feed your kids cereals and bars and drinks that are fortified with vitamins, just in case.
Taking extra precautions to ensure that your kids are getting enough nutrition is a good thing. The best daily multi-vitamin to give to kids is one that contains 100 percent of each listed nutrient, and of course one that has a comprehensive list of offered nutrients on the label. Recently, however, parents have become concerned over how much is too much. Is it possible that you could be overdosing your child on vitamins?
This is a legitimate concern but fortunately in most cases parents need not worry about overdosing. Most of the time, kids don’t get enough vitamins to even meet the required RDA or recommended daily allowance standards, even with all of those fortified foods.
The only vitamins that parents might have a warranted overdose concern about are ones which are fat-soluble, such as vitamins A and D. It is possible for children to overdose on vitamins such as these but the possibility is so unlikely that even these should not cause an all-consuming concern for parents. Even if your child is getting “100 percent” of vitamins A and D in their children’s multi in addition to extra doses in milk products, juice drinks, cereal, and granola bars, these amounts are not very likely to lead to a serious problem.
Iron on the other hand is something to be concerned about. Too much iron can lead to fatal poisoning. This type of poisoning is actually a leading cause of death in children under six, so steer clear of too many iron-enriched products.
If you are still uneasy about giving your kids too many fortified foods, there is an easy solution to the problem. Replace vitamin-fortified snacks and juices with foods that really do contain adequate nutrition. For example, next time your child is thirsty and wants fortified orange juice, give him a glass of water for the thirst and an orange for the taste, instead. Stop buying packaged foods and replace them with fresh produce substitutes
Of course it isn’t possible to stay away from all fortified foods. Also, fortified options might be better than the alternative they prefer to have, something that’s unhealthy and unfortified. If your child does not get the recommended three servings a day of calcium in addition to a daily multi-vitamin, then fortified milk or other products enriched with calcium are ok to give to your child. You don’t need to give kids foods that are vitamin C enriched. If they aren’t getting enough, give them more fruits.
If you aren’t sure what’s right and what’s not, consult a pediatrician with questions.
