Vitamins for Africa

When a recent blood test revealed one of my sons had low iron levels, I headed to the store for a children's supplement with iron. And what I saw were rows and rows of colorful gummies. Turns out, gummy vitamins are a hot business, a growing segment of the multi-billion-dollar supplement industry. (They're even becoming popular with adults who are tired of popping pills.) On the surface, gummies seem like a sweet and easy way to help the medicine go down. But is there a downside?"I never recommend gummy vitamins to my patients," says pediatrician Natalie Muth, M.D., RDN, co-author of The Picky Eater Project. For starters, they're usually higher in added sugar than other vitamins, she says. It's not uncommon for a serving (typically two gummies) to have almost a teaspoon of added sugar. Considering the recommended limit is six teaspoons a day, that's a lot!