Walk down the vitamin aisle of any UK supermarket and you’ll find shelves heaving with brightly coloured labels and cartoon characters, all promising to support the health of the next generation. But looks, as any parent soon learns, can be deceiving.
The uncomfortable truth is that the kids’ vitamin industry spends more on sugar and artificial sweeteners than it does vitamins. Cost pressures have also led some brands and own-label products to reduce their nutrient levels to token doses that fall short of NHS guidance.
I understand the commercial pressures facing manufacturers at a time when ingredients are more expensive than ever and consumers are watching every penny, but when it comes to our children’s health, there have to be some lines we refuse to cross.
It cannot be right that some kids’ vitamins contain sugar levels higher than sweets. Nor is it fair to parents that products marketed as kids’ vitamins can fall short of the Department of Health dose recommendation.
The £110m children’s vitamin market is growing by around 8% a year, with gummies now dominating the category. It’s no surprise they’re doing so well: kids love them because they look and taste like sweets, while parents love the convenience.
The problem is that many gummy vitamins contain between 2g and 4g of sugar per serving. Given the NHS recommends four to six-year-olds consume no more than 19g of free sugars a day, a single serving can account for more than 20% of that daily limit.
I don’t think that’s acceptable. If you’re selling a product as a health supplement for kids, it shouldn’t be adding that much sugar to their diet.
Sugar isn’t the only issue – vitamin D levels need closer scrutiny too. The NHS and government recommendation is that kids from birth to the age of five should receive 10 micrograms of vitamin D daily to support growth and development. Yet recent research by The Sunday Times found that five out of eight leading kids’ vitamin brands on sale in Britain contain well below that level.
Parents paying a premium
The result is a category where parents pay a premium, believe they’re following health guidance and end up with a product that isn’t actually doing what they think it’s doing. This isn’t just a consumer issue, it’s a public health issue. Vitamin D deficiency remains a genuine concern in the UK and the category that should be helping to address it is falling short.
Current food supplement regulations focus heavily on labelling and claims, but don’t touch on effective dosing. This creates a race to the bottom where brands compete on price and packaging appeal, rather than the quality of what’s inside.
I believe the time has come for some soul-searching within the industry and for some honest answers to fair questions. Unlike adults, kids don’t choose what goes into their shopping basket, which puts an event greater responsility on brands and retailers to get it right.
I’m not generally a fan of more regulation, because I think it can create as many problems as it solves. But when kids’ health is at stake, I feel strongly that there should be a minimum formulation standard for any product marketed as a kids’ supplement. At the very least, vitamin D content should meet NHS guidance of 10mcg per recommended daily serving, and products sold as health supplements should not be contributing unnecessary amounts of sugar to children’s diets.
At Tonic, we’ve deliberately taken a different approach. We’ve shown that it’s possible to formulate kids’ supplements that meet NHS guidance without having to add any sugar, sweeteners or junk, which is why I don’t accept the argument that the industry has to choose between taste and good health.
This is not a radical ask: it should be the bare minimum. The kids’ vitamin category has grown rapidly, but standards haven’t kept pace. Regulation may help accelerate change, but brands and retailers also need to take a hard look at the products they put on shelves. Parents deserve products that genuinely support their children’s health, not products that simply look healthy.
Sunna van Kampen is founder of Tonic
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