Vitamins and Minerals: An Essential Part of Every Child's Diet

Do children need to take vitamins? Yes! And no! Vitamins and minerals are vital for normal growth and development, but children who eat well-balanced diets usually get as much as they need from the foods they eat and therefore don't require supplements.

That said, supplemental vitamins and minerals may be needed if your child is a vegetarian, if he eats poorly or has an unusual diet, or if he has an underlying medical condition that interferes with the body's absorption of vitamins and minerals (for example, cystic fibrosis or celiac disease). Supplemental vitamin D is recommended for breast-fed infants. Infants who drink excessive amounts of milk may need additional iron.

Only about one-third of our children have enough calcium in their diets. This means that most of our kids are at risk for bone fractures and, later in life, osteoporosis. Children who drink too much soda and other carbonated beverages are also at risk for poor bone mineralization and osteoporosis.

So what's wrong with just giving your child a multivitamin? Nothing necessarily, as long as you remember that it is a medicine, not a candy. More is not always better. Like all medicines, too much can lead to toxicity! Excessive consumption of some of the water-soluble vitamins probably does nothing more than the recommended amounts, but excessive vitamin C is associated with an increased risk of kidney stones. Fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) are not excreted in the urine, and consuming too much of these can result in severe toxicity.

The bottom line here is that your children probably don't need daily vitamins if they are eating well-balanced meals. However, there is nothing wrong with a single daily vitamin if you really want to make sure they are getting all of their essential vitamins and minerals. Just limit it to one a day and keep the container in the medicine cabinet out of reach of smaller children. Furthermore, since iron poisoning is a leading cause of toxic ingestion among small children, you may want to choose a multivitamin without iron.