Rating:

I can take two tablets of this vitamin all at once knowing this vitamin is a timed release. I don’t need to take one tablet in the morning and one tablet at night.

I started to take these vitamins to improve my energy level during mid-day. This vitamin has improved my energy level but getting and staying fit has helped me even more.

Overall, this is not a miracle product. It will not make a unhealthy person healthy and it certainly will not mitigate bad diet and lack of exercise. But if you are one of those people who take vitamins for a energy boost, I highly recommend these timed release vitamins which allows a person to take two tablets at once and the energy boost will last longer.

Rating:

These vitamins are in caplet forms (which is basically just a coated tablet) and they are huge. If you’re not good at swallowing pills then this multi should be avoided.

Now, let’s talk about the quality of this product, after all, most of us take vitamins to improve our health so let’s see if this multivitamin has what one would really need:

The good thing is that 50% of the vitamin A is in the form of beta-carotene. And unfortunately that’s about where the good stops and where the rest of the cheapness of this vitamin begins:

It lists the calcium as a mixture of calcium carbonate and calcium citrate. Calcium carbonate is a very cheap form of calcium and has a very low absorption rate in the body. Most cheap vitamins (such as Centrum and One-A-Day) uses calcium carbonate because it’s cheap and the general public doesn’t know any better. Calcium citrate on the other hand, is a very expensive but possibly the best form of calcium available. GNC’s Mega Men does a tactic to fool people into thinking they are getting quality calcium: they mix both the carbonate and citrate forms of calcium together, without even stating what percentage of the calcium is in the carbonate form and what percentage is in the citrate form. For all we know, this could be 99% calcium carbonate and only 1% calcium citrate.

Another cheap ingredient is magensium in the form of magensium oxide. Again, magnesium citrate is the superior form of magnesium. This time GNC doesn’t even try to disguise their cheap magnesium, it is just straight up cheap magnesium oxide. Zinc is also in a cheap oxide form.

Vitamin B12 is in the cheap cyanocobalmin form, which methylcobalamin is the active form of B-12, another strike against this cheap multi in disguise of a quality product.

This vitamin does give 200mcg of selenium which is the desired amount to get the most health benefits according to the latest research… too bad it’s not in the L-Selenomethionine form which is the active form of selenium.

The list goes on on why this is actually not that great of a vitamin, but the topper, to top everything off, it contains titanium dioxide which is a possible carcinogen.

Bottom line: look for another multi. This is really not much better than Centrum of One-A-Day, but it sure is a HECK of a lot more expensive!

Tips to look for in a multiviatmin:

-Vitamin A as 100% betacarotene (the safest form of vitamin A, unless you smoke, in which case beta-carotene can increase your chances of lung cancer)

-minerals in either citrate or amino acid chelate forms, but NOT carbonates or oxides, i.e. calcium citrate & magnesium citrate (not mixtures such as what this multi does)

-methylcobalmin for vitamin B-12

-200mcg of selenium in the L-selenomethionine form

-capsule, softgel or liquid is the perferred form since caplets/tablets have a harder time dissolving and some brands have been found to not dissolve at all… for the record, GNC Mega Men’s does not have this problem.

-Avoid vitamins that have artificial fillers or objectionable ingredients, such as titanium dioxide.

Almost no multivitamin is going to be completely perfect so some additional supplementing is almost always going to be needed. But this multivitamin just has too many flaws to over-come.