Washington Post: How Does Your Multivitamin Stack Up?

Rating Firm Flunks One-Third of Samples Tested for Purity and Dosage

By Craig Stoltz
Tuesday, February 20, 2001; Page HE06

Recent laboratory tests of 27 types of multivitamins has again demonstrated the worrisome fact that many packages of dietary supplements on store shelves don't contain what their labels say.

The tests, conducted by Consumerlabs.com, a research and publishing firm that performs independent testing of supplements for the industry and consumers, assigned nine of the 27 products a failing grade. This means they failed either to contain the labeled ingredients in the amounts described, or failed related tests of disintegration and impurity levels.

This does not mean that one-third of multivitamins for sale fail to meet such standards -- it could be worse than that. According to Consumerlab's research vice president William Obermeyer, who used to work for the Food and Drug Administration, some products were tested because their makers wanted to be evaluated, which usually means the maker has a high degree of confidence in the product's quality. Other products in the tests had been randomly selected in retail stores.

Among the multis that passed muster: GlaxoSmithKline's Geritol; Amway's Nutrilite; Bayer's One a Day; and Centrum's Silver formulation. Maddeningly, Consumerlabs does not publish the names of the failing products. But it does list the "conditionally approved," meaning they passed the firm's tests but their formulations may subject certain subgroups to risks. For instance, Sundown's Pokemon Complete multis, according to Consumerlabs, may subject kids under 9 to excessive amounts of copper, niacin, vitamin A and zinc.

One product aimed at pregnant women contained only 75 percent of the listed amount of folic acid -- a troublesome finding since insufficient levels of folic acid have been found to be closely associated with serious birth defects.

A description of the report can be found at www.consumerlabs.com. But access to the data on passing products is limited to the site's paid subscribers -- $11.95 per year or $3.95 for access to a single report.

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