Do Your Kids Need Dietary Supplements?

What's For Dinner Mum?

A common enough question in the early hours of the evening. But, what do we do when the responding groans and complaints, following Mum's description of dinner, are then followed by half-eaten meals? Should we be getting our kids dietary supplements to fill the gaps in our children's diets?

Dietary Supplements - The Solution For Our Children?

The best strategy for promoting good health in our children is to encourage them to eat a healthy and varied diet, according to the Ministry of Health. A wide variety of foods will provide our children with all the vitamins and minerals they need, along with the energy and building blocks required for fuel and growth.

In some situations a supplement may be called for though, says the Ministry of Health, for example:

1. Children with a diagnosed milk allergy may need a calcium supplement;

2. Children consuming a vegan diet will need a vitamin B12 supplement.

But, what about if your child is a bit of a fussy eater, maybe they need a multivitamin to provide any nutrients they're missing out on? Or maybe you should give a supplement to your children even if they have a pretty good diet - just in case?

Concerns About Dietary Supplement Use By Children

Supplements are widely available in stores and so many people are using them that's it's easy to think supplement use is safe and an acceptable practise. In reality, there is much we don't know about the use of dietary supplements by children.

Potential for Adverse Effects From Supplement Use

The Ministry of Health has a number of valid concerns about supplement use in children, for instance:

1. The unknown potential for adverse health effects, in the future, as a result of taking large numbers of certain vitamins and minerals;

2. The potential for interactions between minerals and trace elements. That is, large supplemental intakes of one mineral can inhibit the absorption of other nutrients thereby resulting in a deficiency of another nutrient;

Supplements May Not Contain All The Nutrients Your Child Needs

A reliance on dietary supplements also suggests that those supplements will provide all of the nutrients that your child needs for growth and healthy development. This couldn't be further from the truth. Scientists have not identified all the components found within food. So it is possible that other yet unidentified nutritional compounds are integral to our good health... clearly these won't be in our dietary supplements because we don't even know what they are yet.

Consider this fictitious example: scientists note that people eating frumpty-gooples seem to have better health and live longer than people who don't eat frumpty-gooples. They discover that frumpty-gooples contain a lot of vitamin C and so they suggest that the high vitamin C content of frumpty-gooples might be the cause. So some people package up the vitamin C in tablets and sell it to consumers. But, the scientists aren't yet certain the vitamin C is the link between frumpty-gooples and good health. They've also found some other nutrients in frumpty-gooples that seem to be involved. So the scientists suggest that everyone who wants good health and long life eats frumpty-gooples, because that way they'll be sure to get all the good things in the frumpty-gooples. If you just buy the vitamin C tablet you're probably missing out on all the other good nutrients.

No frumpty-gooples don't exist. But this story is symbolic of our food system today. We know, for instance, that a diet containing five or more servings of fruit and vegetables each day is good for our health. But we really don't know exactly what components in the fruit and vegetables are the exact cause of this - vitamins? antioxidants? fibre? something else as yet undiscovered?

The solution then, is to eat the fruit and vegetables whole, not to rely on supplements that supposedly contain the important nutrients from fruit and vegetables. Because the truth is - no-one can guarantee you're buying the right nutrients in your supplements.

A Reliance On Supplements May Lead To Poorer Dietary Habits

There is also concern that a regular dietary supplement may give people a false sense of security - I'm okay, I don't need to worry too much about what I eat because I take a supplement - says the Ministry of Health. In the first instance we should always aim to eat a healthy and varied diet, not rely on dietary supplements.

Create Healthy Eating Habits For Life

The secret to healthy children is a healthy diet and exercise, not dietary supplementation. Children who develop healthy eating habits when they are young are more likely to carry these habits through into adulthood and continue to lead a healthy lifestyle when older.

So it's far preferable that as parents we put our time, energy and money into encouraging our children to eat healthy food, rather than using supplements as an unnecessary backstop. We can do this by providing lots of healthy and varied foods in our household, by modelling healthy eating behaviours ourselves, by encouraging our children to try new foods - make food, cooking and eating a fun experience rather than World War III. If you'd like some more information on this topic then check out the following link:

Healthy Eating for Children and Families

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About The Author

Jennifer Bowden Nutritionist, MSc (Dist), BSc (Hons) - Human Nutrition

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