Last year, we spent more than £750 million on vitamins and dietary supplements. That's more than twice the amount invested by Cancer Research UK in the hunt for cures.And by 2018, says market analyst Euromonitor International, that will have climbed to £870 million - with £280 million swallowed up by vitamins alone.But are we, as a distinguished U.S. medical journal concluded recently, literally flushing our money down the loo? Studies show no evidence that vitamin and mineral supplements made the slightest bit of difference in preventing cancer, heart disease, dementia or death 'Enough is enough,' declared the Annals of Internal Medicine in December, unveiling a series of major studies that found no evidence that supplements made the slightest bit of difference in preventing cancer, heart disease, dementia or death.'Stop wasting money on vitamin and mineral supplements.' Cheap or expensive, they're all the same, says David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College London.
'My message would be don't waste your money on either. It's well established that most people don't need them.' Lots of us are happy to take daily multivitamins, but do we really have to hand over quite so much money to the 'nutraceutical' companies that peddle these products?Most of us buy from names we know - Boots, Holland & Barrett or online stores such as Nature's Best. After years of exposure to advertising, we instinctively trust the brands we recognise - Seven Seas, Centrum or Vitabiotics, the maker of Wellwoman and Pregnacare supplements.Nothing wrong with any of them, of course. But take a walk down almost any High Street - well, maybe a couple of streets back from the High Street - and you could save yourself a packet.Welcome to Poundland, home to all things for a quid - including a new, no-frills range of vitamin supplements at a fraction of the price of their big-brand rivals.Granted, walking into a Poundland is not quite the same experience as shopping in Boots or Holland & Barrett.
But you could save yourself rather a great deal of money. The basic range from Poundland is as good as the big-name brands - because it has to be Choosing Poundland's Vitawell effervescent vitamin C tablets over big-brand versions, for example, will cost £18.25 for a year - saving you as much as £48. Holland & Barrett's version, for instance, costs £50 a year, while Seven Seas Haliborange Vitamin C costs £66.And, if you know exactly what you want from a multivitamin, a trip to Poundland could save you the best part of £100 - providing you can live without exotic extras such as ginseng, arginine, methionine and co-enzyme Q10 (hint: you can).But is the basic range from Poundland as good as anything from the big-name brands?The short answer is yes - because it has to be. For one thing, says Bridget Benelam, a senior scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, however fancy the packaging and the advertising, a vitamin is still just a vitamin, and a mineral a mineral.Take vitamin C, she says.
Or rather, don't bother. 'There's no evidence that high doses of vitamin C have any effect,' she says. Like vitamin B, it is water soluble, which means that any excess we consume just 'goes down the loo'.But if you feel you must take it, 'vitamin C is a specific chemical compound, ascorbic acid - it wouldn't really make any difference whether it's bought in Poundland or anywhere else'.Very few vitamins are extracted from expensive natural sources. It's much cheaper, and just as effective, to synthethise them. There are exceptions, such as vitamin E, and when manufacturers use the natural version of this, extracted from vegetable oils, they are quick to label it 'natural'. But what about the quality?Asked to justify the price of their products, some of the big names highlighted the lengths to which they went. 'The health and safety of our customers is important to us,' said a spokesperson for Boots. 'We ensure all our food supplement products are manufactured by suppliers who have been approved against our stringent quality, ethical and sustainability standards to meet all regulatory requirements.'Vitabiotics - the top-selling nutraceutical company - believes 'customers are willing to pay a few pence more per day for high quality'.
A spokesperson for Holland & Barrett said it's 'impossible to comment on the differences between any two supplements without rigorous laboratory testing'.In fact, all supplements sold in Britain - made here or imported - are subject to the 2002 EC Food and Supplements Directive. This lays down the 13 vitamins and 16 minerals that can be used, and the information that must be on the labels.Technically, supplements are also governed by food safety legislation, which makes it an offence to sell anything 'injurious to health'.And though supplements aren't medicines, many makers choose to operate to Good Manufacturing Practice, policed in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). 'Not all brands conform to GMP, because they don't have to,' Robert Hobson, head of nutrition for Healthspan, told the Mail. 'Anyone buying vitamins and supplements should check they are produced to GMP standards.'Of course, Poundland itself probably knows very little about vitamins - but then, it doesn't have to.
As with most other own-brand supplements, Poundland's are made to order by specialist companies, many of which are based in Britain.Interestingly, while few of the big names will reveal who makes their products, Poundland makes no secret of the fact that its cheap supplements are produced by Principle Healthcare International in Skipton, North Yorkshire. In fact, it advertises the fact on every box of pills, even though almost no one else gives the same information. And in case you're wondering, Principle Healthcare is no slouch when it comes to quality control.As well as meeting GMP standards, it holds a food safety certificate for its packaging process, and all its raw materials come from MHRA-approved sources.It is also a member of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a 12-member group of 'the nation's leading companies' - including Boots and Seven Seas - and is the proud owner of a royal seal of approval.In other words, Poundland's vitamins won't be any less good for you, which means it comes down to what you're getting for your money.'Some formulations may contain low token levels of certain nutrients, rather than optimum or recommended levels,' says Vitabiotics.True - and comparing like with like in the supplements marketplace is no easy business.
Every company has its own ideas about what should go into a multivitamin. Working out which represents best value can require a degree in pharmaceutical chemistry and a PhD in nutritional sciences.But the first thing to remember is that supplements, cheap or expensive, will always provide more than you need of a particular nutrient.The Europe-wide Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) shows how much of each vitamin and mineral you should aim to get each day from all sources, especially food, and manufacturers of supplements must show on the label the percentage of each nutrient's RDA in a tablet. Even a supplement that gives 100 per cent of the RDA of each nutrient is indulging in overkill, because you will be getting most of what you need from food.That, says Professor David Colquhoun, makes it hard to understand why so many supplements include vastly more than the RDA. Supplements, cheap or expensive, will always provide more than you need of a particular nutrient The RDA for vitamin C, for example, is a mere 80 milligrams, yet many formulations pack in 1,000mg - even though, says Bridget Benelam, 'there's not really any evidence that these hugely high doses have any effect'.
On this basis, when it comes to the basic 13 vitamins and 16 minerals, Poundland's Vitawell Multivitamin and Iron gives you all the nutrients you need - and some you don't, such as 1,000mg of vitamin C.As for all the other stuff you won't find in the Poundland multivitamin - additional nutrients, amino acids and botanical extracts packed into some of the upmarket supplements - there's no official advice on whether we need them.Take arginine, which crops up in Vitabiotics' Wellman Original. An amino acid that has been linked to heart health, it is found in meat, fish, nuts and dairy products. Deficiency is very rare.This brings us to the big showdown. At first glance, it's tough to imagine Poundland in a head-to-head with Wellman Original, the big kid on the multivitamins block.For one thing, Wellman Original (£8.55 for 30 tablets) rarely bothers with 100 per cent of something when 200 per cent or more will do. And in addition to iron, there's magnesium, copper, selenium and zinc - not to mention ginseng, arginine, methionine and a bunch of other stuff for which no RDAs exist.'Like most things in life, you get what you pay for,' said a Vitabiotics spokesperson.