What's in Your Vitamin?

We all take our multivitamins like good little girls and boys, trusting the big old vitamin manufacturers to have our best health in mind.

Not.

This story from MSNBC cites a study by ConsumerLab.com that shows half of 27 brands of multivitamins failed a quality test.

One vitamin--The Vitamin Shoppe Multivitamins Especially for Women, was contaminated with lead. Lead!

Others didn't contain the ingredients they claimed, or contained them in different amounts. The article said, "Hero Nutritionals Yummi Bears, a multivitamin for children, had 216 percent of the labeled amount of vitamin A in the retinol form, delivering 5,400 International Units (IU) in a daily serving. That's substantially more than the upper tolerable level set by the Institute of Medicine of 2,000 IU for kids ages 1 to 3 and 3,000 IU for those 4 to 8."

Nature's Plus Especially Yours for Women took twice as long as allowed to disintegrate, while AARP's Maturity Formula took almost twice as long. Eniva's VIBE, had only half the amount of Vitamin A claimed on the label.

The good news is that if you stick with the big brands, you're probably OK. Among the multivitamins passing the test were Centrum, One-a-Day, Flintstones Complete, and the Member's Mark brand from Sam's Club.

Unfortunately, you have to subscribe to the site to see the full report. Hopefully, it'll get picked up somewhere else to get the full list.