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Surprising results in new studies on children's vitamins
A new study on children’s vitamins had surprising results. The study shows that most children who take vitamins have good nutrition and don’t need them, and children who don’t have good nutrition need them but don’t have access to them. In an article in the New York Times, the results of the study surprised researchers at the University of California Davis School of Medicine who treat children with nutritional problems. The article by Roni Caryn Rabin quoted lead author Dr. Ulfat Shaikh, a pediatrician at the UC-Davis School of Medicine, who said researchers anticipated that people using minerals and vitamin supplements were counteracting the effects of poor nutrition, but the reverse proved true.
The children who used supplements the most were those who already drank a lot of milk, ate a lot of fiber and didn't consume much fat or cholesterol, Dr. Shaikh said. They tended to be healthier white children from higher income families with health insurance. They also tended to get exercise, weren't overweight, already had good health, and didn't watch too much television or spend a lot of time playing video games.
The study, which was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, analyzed results of a survey conducted from 1999 to 2004 by the National Health and Nutrition Examination. Researchers found that about one-third of American children ages 2 to 17 had used a vitamin or mineral supplement within the previous month, but that most of them did not need to supplement their diet.
On the other hand, children who didn’t take vitamins tended to have poor nutrition. They lived in low-income families that were short of food and had less access to health care, the study found. Dr. Shaikh said poverty was the deciding factor because parents who were poor were unable to afford vitamins.
The American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend vitamin supplements for children over a year who eat a healthy diet. According to an article published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/pharmacology/a/byb_vitamins.htm, a diet based on the Food Guide Pyramid provides adequate amounts of all the vitamins a child needs.
They do recommend vitamins for children with chronic illnesses or eating disorders and for obese children trying to lose weight. Some vegetarians may need vitamins to meet all of their nutritional needs. The article says there has been an increase in cases of rickets from a deficiency of vitamin D. The AAP recommends that breastfed infants should receive 200 IU of Vitamin D each day. Older children who don’t drink at least 500ml (about 17 ounces) of Vitamin D fortified milk will also need Vitamin D supplements if they don’t get regular sunlight exposure. The research indicates that many ‘complete’ multivitamins do not have all of the recommended amounts of the vitamins and minerals that children need each day and most don’t have enough calcium.
