Poles spend as much as PLN 100 million annually on vitamin dietary supplements for children up to three years of age. Such preparations are given to one in three small children, but they are completely unnecessary. Also, when taken in excess, they can even be harmful.
The Nationwide Health Care System warns against the excessive use of multivitamin preparations by parents. Their attempts to supplement the child’s normal diet with them are unnecessary. Specialists claim that there is no need for this. The important thing is to provide children with a balanced diet.
Too much multivitamin
Dr. Joanna Friedman-Gruszczyńska from the Children’s Memorial Health Institute assured everyone that studies show no significant deficiencies in the diets of Polish children. The exception is vitamin D. However, multivitamin preparations are of no use here, because they contain too small contents of it.
Vitamin D is produced in the human skin following exposure to solar radiation. In our climate zone the low insolation in the period from October to March causes deficiencies of vitamin D, also in adults.
Vitamin D deficiency can be alleviated, but only with preparations specifically intended for this purpose. Such supplementation should last throughout the entire development period – until the age of 18.
According to Dr. Anna Stolarczyk from the Children’s Memorial Health Institute, it is usually not necessary only in infants fed formulas. To satisfy the daily demand for vitamin D in a small child, it is enough to provide 500-800 ml of infant formulas. Such supplementation is necessary only in infants who consume less milk.
It’s better to improve the diet
When attempting to supplement vitamin D through higher doses of multivitamin preparations, the deficiencies are alleviated, but overdoses of other vitamins can occur, which might be harmful to the child.
Unfortunately, that is what often happens. This is proven by studies performed on four hundred babies from one to three years of age, which were conducted by Prof. Halina Weker from the Institute of Mother and Child in Warsaw: the content of most vitamins and mineral ingredients in the diets of those children was considerably higher than the recommended standard.
Parents should rather focus on ensuring a proper diet for their children. They have enough vitamins, but they consume too much food with an adverse effect on health that effectively pave the way to future bad eating habits.
One in two toddlers between one and three years of age have too many calories, fats, and carbohydrates in their daily diets. Almost every single one of them eats too much salt and sugar. For this reason, 27.5% of children suffer from overweight or obesity before they turn three.
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