Few kids take vitamins (Reuters)

Reuters:

Researchers surprised so few kids take vitamins

Mon Oct 1, 2007 5:57pm EDT

 

 

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By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Less than a third of U.S. children are taking vitamin and mineral dietary supplements, according to a study published on Monday by researchers who were surprised the number was so low.

All told, 32 percent of U.S. children used a dietary supplement in the past month, based on a nationally representative survey from 1999 to 2002 that included 10,136 children age 18 or younger, the researchers said.

The most commonly used supplements were multivitamins and multiminerals, taken by 18 percent of the children. Another 4 percent used single-vitamin supplements and 2 percent used single-mineral supplements, and just under 1 percent used botanical supplements, the researchers said.

The remaining supplement users took a diverse array of other supplement types, the researchers said.

"In the adult population, 50 percent of the U.S. population is taking any dietary supplement. Thirty percent of the adult population is taking a multivitamin, multimineral preparation," Mary Frances Picciano, a nutrition researcher at the National Institutes of Health who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

"We anticipated that the usage would be higher among children than it would be among adults, and we found just the opposite," Picciano added.

The study appears in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The children using supplements were more likely to be thinner, from a higher-income family without smokers, and spend less time with television and video games, the study found. Non-Hispanic white children were about twice as likely as black children to take these supplements.