Are You Giving Your Child Inferior Vitamins?

As parents, we want to make sure that our children get the best nutrition possible because proper nutrition helps give them a boost in their development and growth. For most of us with picky eaters at home, we give our children daily vitamins to help deliver these important vitamins and nutrients. When we asked our pediatrician for a recommended daily vitamins for our kids and she told us to buy the bulk gummy vitamins from Costco or Safeway. Since then, my wife and I have been buying bottles of gummy vitamins which the kids eat with minimal fuss, they don’t break the bank, and they get the job done.

Problem solved, right? I thought so, until I went to the Dad 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, where I learned about SmartyPants Vitamins.

Mike and Clay, the SmartyPants reps I spoke with, told me all about how SmartyPants goes to great lengths to make sure they’re using ultra-premium ingredients, give back to the global community, and strive to deliver superior vitamins. When I compared the labels of SmartyPants to the vitamins we’ve been giving our children, I was shocked to see how much better the SmartyPants vitamins were!

Quality, Sustainable Ingredients

SmartyPants offer two types of vitamins for children – Kids Complete and Kids Complete + Fiber – with both types providing kids with a multivitamin, Omega 3s, and vitamin D.

The effectiveness of a vitamin isn’t just in what is provided, but is largely determined by the quality of the ingredient itself. Let me give you some examples of how SmartyPants’ approach to sourcing the ingredients for their products sets them apart from others on the market.

• Gluten Free – No one in our family has a gluten sensitivity, so I was surprised to learn that people who are sensitive to gluten are not able to eat most gummy products that are on the market. SmartyPants vitamins are all gluten-free for those kids (and adults) who want gummy vitamins!
• Fiber – It should go without saying that any parent who has had to deal with a constipated child can see the value in giving your child the fiber they need in a chewable item they’ll actually eat.
• Omega 3s – SmartyPants gets the fish oil for their vitamins from eco-friendly small fish (sardine and anchovy). This helps make sure that, in order to provide their vitamins with the essential fish oil, they’re not contributing to the serious problem of over-fishing in our oceans.
• No Artificial Colors – There’s a lot of controversy and propaganda surrounding the health implications of artificial coloring in our foods. To make things easier for parents, SmartyPants simply does not put artificial colors in their vitamins. Instead, they use organic black carrot juice concentrate, annatto, and organic turmeric for their coloring.
• No Artificial Flavors – For flavoring, they use natural flavors like orange, lemon, and strawberry-banana. No hard-to-pronounce chemical names here.
• No Artificial Sweeteners – SmartyPants vitamins use only organic sugars and even then, each serving of the Kids Complete has only 5g of sugars. If your child is taking the Kids Complete + Fiber vitamins, they are only ingesting 2g of organic sugars.
• Peanut and Tree Nut Free – Have a nut allergy? Not a problem! SmartyPants vitamins are tree nut and peanut free.
• Independent Lab Testing – SmartyPants is so committed to offer quality product, using only pure ingredients, that they have a third-party test their batches of gummy vitamins.

I could go on and on about the ingredients in SmartyPants vitamins all day long, but instead I highly recommend you head to their website and read the wealth of information they have there, which goes to show just how transparent they are as a company. If they make a claim, they back it up by quoting their sources.

Being a skeptical person, I wanted to see what actual children thought of these vitamins. A company rep can stand there and tell me that kids love them, but for me, I wanted proof. I brought home a bunch of sample packs from the Summit, to see how my kids like them. To my surprise, they loved them and started choosing SmartyPants over the regular brand that we’ve been buying. My youngest, Thing 3, even said they taste like candy (without being a sugar bomb, but that’s my little secret!).

What I recommend you do is compare the labels of your child’s current vitamin with the labels on the SmartyPants website. SmartyPants products are backed by a Certificate of Analysis which means you can trust that what the label says is in the vitamin, actually is in the vitamin.

SmartyPants + You = Vitamin Angels

A lot of companies make a good product and call it a day. What really drew me toward SmartyPants, was that they set out from the beginning to make people healthier. For them as a company, it was never a question about whether or not they would go above and beyond – it was expected of themselves. That’s why SmartyPants partners with Vitamin Angels, to help “at-risk populations in need – specifically pregnant women, new mothers, and children under five – gain access to lifesaving and life changing vitamins and minerals.”

For every bottle of SmartyPants vitamins sold, they make a 1-to-1 donation of a bottle to Vitamin Angels. Buy a bottle of Kids Complete + Fiber? They give a bottle away through Vitamin Angels. Simple and transparent, in keeping with the core values of Smarty Pants.

Enter To Win!

I realize that me just telling you how impressed both myself and my children are with the SmartyPants vitamins won’t necessarily be enough to convince you to switch. Which is why I’m extremely happy to share that I’m teaming up with SmartyPants to give away a bundle of SmartyPants vitamins! Here are the details for your chance to win:

• The giveaway begins at 8am PST on Wednesday, April 1, and ends at 8am PST on Wednesday, April 8.
• Enter by fulfilling any or all of the entry options in the widget below.
• Terms: You must be at least 18 years of age to win.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclaimer: My family was sent the product in the picture shown in this post as compensation. The opinions and content of this post are entirely my own.