Vegan Multivitamins and Minerals from Vegan Suppliers

Vegan Multivitamins

There are tons of them out there, but most are pathetic mixes of low-absorption synthetic substances at inconsequential doses. Many are bulked out with green foods and numerous vegetarian multivits are not vegan as they contain ‘hidden’ non-vegan ingredients such as propolis, royal jelly, or vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) from lanolin (sheep fat, or sheep’s skin oil from when they’re sheared). Spotting a good vegan multivitamin is difficult unless you know what you’re looking for and have the time to look for it. Hopefully this handy guide can be of some use to you! Here are some basic formulas, some top-notch products, and some powders and liquids for versatility and dose-flexibility.

There is some advice on when and how to take multivitamins to make sure you get the most out of the products once you’ve gone to all that trouble to find them in the first place. Also, there are a few products listed here that are labelled vegan, but turn out not to be, hopefully saving you some trouble when shopping both online and in store! Seems some people forget what it means to be vegan… and some of the non-vegan items that sneak into products are detailed here for handy reference

Vegan Brands

First, let’s take a quick look at which brands are around that are specifically vegan. Although it’s great to admire their ethics and commend them to restricting their line to cruelty-free non-animal-derived ingredients, it doesn’t always guarantee nutritional quality unfortunately, and you may simply be paying extra for their ethical stance (which, clearly isn’t necessarily a bad thing!), when you could get a superior product from a company that carries other non-vegan supplements in its catalogue.

Deva

Deva provide purely vegan products, such as glucosamine, multivitamins, CoQ10, and so on. Their ethical stance is great, they are approved by the Vegan Society, and their prices are pretty good too. Unfortunately they don’t always use the best forms of vitamins in their supplements, with their multivitamin containing pyridoxine hydrochloride rather than pyridoxal-5-phosphate, calcium carbonate rather than citrate, and magnesium oxide rather than citrate or bisglycinate, for example. In addition, some of the levels of vitamins in their products are a little low. This is sometimes a good thing, say if you just want an insurance does and have a great and varied diet, or perhaps take other specific supplements or another multivitamin-rich powder or juice, such as Vega’s Wholefood Optimiser. On the plus side, they do use vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) from a vegan source, rather than vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) that is used in a lot of so-called vegetarian formulas.

Deva Vegan Nutritional Products are also available at iHealthTree.com and there’s a tasty sale on currently, so a good time to try, or a good time to stock up if you already know how great these products are. They’re all Vegan Society approved too!

Vegan Society Vitamins

The UK Vegan Society sells a really basic vitamin complex through its online store. It’s called Veg1 and supplies B2, B6, B12, Folic Acid, Iodine, Vitamin D, and Selenium only. This is a shame as the Vegan Society themselves acknowledge that vegans may have difficulty acquiring sufficient zinc from their vegan diet, at least on initial transition. They have had this formula available for a while now so I think there are probably no plans to soup it up in any fashion or supply any other supplement. Perhaps that’s because so many other companies do have really good all round vegan multivitamins for sale and they’re more about advocacy than profit?

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