Lots of folks like gummy vitamins because they’re a sweet way to get your vitamins, but these things are not candy, even though they taste like them. Registered dietitian Angela Lemond, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics reminds us, “Any kind of chewable vitamin should never be seen as candy.”
They make vitamins in chewable form to be easier for people to take, not so they can become a snack. Sure, they contain the other good stuff that vitamins contain, but in this case, you can definitely get too much of a good thing. Keep these things in mind before you chow on a handful of gummy vitamins.
- You could be eating a bunch of sugar and calories - Lemond warns that most commercial gummy vitamins contain about seven to eight calories per gummy, which is about the same as regular gummy bears. Same goes for sugar, each gummy has about one to two grams of the sweet stuff. And that’s not a lot for one, but when you eat 10 at a time, you could down 20 grams of sugar - just in gummy vitamins.
- You might have to run for the bathroom - Watch out for those sugar alcohols, that’s one ingredient your tummy might not enjoy. They go by several different names: or xylitol and when you eat too many gummies in one sitting, those ingredients can give you diarrhea.
- You could actually get too many vitamins and have serious side effects - You can actually overdose on certain vitamins, especially fat-soluble ones like A, D, E, and K, along with minerals like iron and zinc, according to Lemond. Some common side effects of overdoing vitamins include diarrhea or vomiting, or even more serious - liver failure. So stick with the recommended serving size and when you want a handful of candy, just eat real candy.