MyVitamins Supplements on Trial

As a general rule of thumb, you shouldn’t need to supplement your diet with minerals or vitamins if it’s healthy and balanced but sometimes things go a bit squiffy and we need a helping hand. As a vegetarian I take iron and omega 3 supplements to help meet my body’s requirements and prevent severe energy level lows. As a runner I take glucosamine to help protect my joints (although I’m not sure if this effective). As a desk worker I take vitamin D to supplement my body’s own production. And as someone with a bit of a broken system I take high doses of B12 in order to persuade my body to actually absorb the stuff.

So I nigh on rattle but I have learnt how horrible life is without proper amounts of any of these vitamins and minerals. I get the majority of my vitamin supplements from HealthSpan, who deliver high quality and good value products in containers that slide neatly through your letter box, but was contacted by MyVitamins to ask if I’d be interested in trying their supplements. I was, and as they happen to stock flaxseed oil (a vegetarian source of omega 3), B12 and glucosamine it seemed a good opportunity to see how they compared to those I currently take.

Initial impression of the MyVitamins website was that, as a vegetarian, it wasn’t easy to find all the supplements that were appropriate. Although each item states whether or not it is vegetarian friendly, a search doesn’t bring them all up, unlike HealthSpan’s site.

I was rather impressed with the smart, neat, resealable foil pouches that the products arrived in, which slipped easily through the letterbox. But I was less impressed that although the flaxseed oil itself is vegetarian, the capsules it’s contained in, aren’t… something that I hadn’t noticed in the information on the site (it was there, I just didn’t see it). This meant I couldn’t take it. I wonder about the logic behind that… The B12 and glucosamine were fine though and I have now been taking them for two weeks.

The B12 is actually a higher dose than those that I’d been taking (Swanson brand from Amazon) but I’ve noticed no ill effects. In fact I have noticed no discernable difference in how I felt when taking the supplements from MyVitamins as opposed to my regular ones. So they’re comparable on packaging and have slipped up slightly on the not-so-veggie-friendly flaxseed oil but how do they compare on price? Here’s a handy dandy chart to answer that question. 

Product	Supplier	Cost	Number	Dosage	Cost per dose
B12	Swanson	£    6.00	250	500mcg	£                0.02
B12	MyVitamins	£    3.49	30	1000mcg	£                0.12
B12	MyVitamins	£    8.99	90	1000mcg	£                0.10
Glucosamine	Healthspan	£    7.45	160	1000mg	£                0.05
Glucosamine	MyVitamins	£    5.29	60	1000mg	£                0.09
Glucosamine	MyVitamins	£  11.99	180	1000mg	£                0.07
Flaxseed Oil	Healthspan	£    9.95	120	1000mg	£                0.08
Flaxseed Oil	MyVitamins	£    2.79	30	1000mg	£                0.09
Flaxseed Oil	MyVitamins	£    4.99	90	1000mg	£                0.06

In summary even on the biggest quantities of B12 and glucosamine they are more expensive than HealthSpan and Swanson but not by a huge amount however large quantities of flaxseed oil capsules are cheaper from MyVitamins if you’re not adhering to a vegetarian diet.

In my opinion MyVitamins provide good quality products in great packaging but HealthSpan come out on top as their site is more user-friendly and they supply a truly vegetarian source of omega  3.

Thank you to MyVitamins for providing me with the supplements free of charge for testing and review.