Review 001: Ritual–Multivitamin 💊

Final Results

1. Quality: 👍

2. Taste: 👍

3. Money: ﹩

4. Recommend: 😐 (read at the bottom for caveats) 

Website: Ritual

Review Process

Below is my detailed review process for products. I take each product review seriously and will NEVER get paid to promote anything. I, personally, use each product for @ least 7 days before reviewing it.

Cost:

• $ < 5 dollars a day

• $$ <10 dollars a day

• $$$ >10 dollars a day

• 💵 shits expensive

Recommendation: Comprehensive review recommendations.

• 👍: recommend

• 😐: indifferent; certain people might benefit; no explicit health harm nor benefit. ¯_(ツ)/¯ 

• 👎: Do not recommend, poor quality, no benefit, shady practices, identical replica of a superior product, or otherwise. A product just has to meet one of these criteria to fall in this basket.

Quality: Where are the ingredients sourced? Does the website have this information? What are the specific measurements? What does the research say?

• 👍: Ingredients sourced ethically without shady practices, research support one or more of the ingredients, nutritional ingredients labeled.

• 😐: indifferent; no explicit health harm nor benefit. Meh, ¯_(ツ)/¯

• 👎: harmful health ingredients or potentially harmful backed by research with references at end of the post. Ingredients sourced in unethically or unclear methods. No quality control. For a product to get this metric, they have to simply meet one of these.

Taste

• 👍: Taste great.

• 😐: Not the best tasting, but I can live with it.

• 🤢: Wow! This tastes awful. This could be the philosopher's stone elixir, and I still wouldn’t drink it.

Quality 👍

There is an endless void of multivitamins. So, what makes ritual so special? They have a scientific leadership team that includes a registered dietician, physiologist, and toxicology specialists. They are all PhDs. Right away, this separates ritual from 99% of other multivitamin brands without a research-backed scientific team. They also have a scientific advisory board to help guide their future research and stay up to date on information.

Ingredients

• Non-GMO, no artificial colors or synthetic fillers, vegan, gluten, and major allergen-free. They also have a delayed-release capsule design. This is important because the acids in your stomach can in theory denature (destroy) minerals and the very vitamins you are paying for! So, instead, these multivitamins get dissolved and absorbed in the small intestine. A recent clinical study using their multivitamin showed increased vitamin D and Omega-3 DHA levels in 12 weeks in comparison to the placebo group (1). I wrote a review on Seed: Probiotics and they do something similar. This should be the new industry norm.

• Each vitamin and mineral on their website is transparent with references to sources, form, suppliers, and location of manufacturing. It makes finding information straightforward. I would usually dive deep into the science of each ingredient, scouring the web comparing and contrasting in vivo vs in vitro studies. However, each ingredient in itself has extensive backed research already available. However, I’ll dive into more research in my recommendation analysis. Here are the ingredients and their sources.

1. Vitamin D from lichens

2. Omega 3- DHA from microalgae

3. Folate from Salt, Phenylethylamine and Glucosamine

4. Vitamin B12 from Synthesized Vitamin B12

5. Magnesium from Chelated Magnesium

6. Vitamin K2 from Synthesized Vitamin K2

7. Boron from Complex of Boron and Fructose

8. Iron from Ferrous Bisglycinate

9. Vitamin E from Rapeseed oil

10. Biotin from Synthesized Biotin

11. Choline from L- tartaric acid

12. Iodine from Potassium Iodide

13. Zinc from Synthesized Zinc

14. Vitamin A from Vitamin A Acetate

15. Vitamin A from Fermentation of Blakeslea trispora

16. Vitamin C from Synthesized Vitamin C

"Multivitamins and multivitamin supplements have no standard or regulatory definition, such as what nutrients they must contain or in what amounts"-National Institutes of Health

Taste: 👍

Fish oil burps? No thank-you. Ritual has minty tabs that are infused with peppermint oil in each bottle. The pills don’t smell artificial and don’t taste like so. That being said, there is a slight oil flavoring from the microalgae they use. But not nearly as bad. 

Money: ﹩

$30 bucks for a month supply, so around $1 dollar a day. Fairly well priced.

Recommendation 😐 ¯_(ツ)/¯

How much do you think Americans pay for multivitamins a year? Take a second and think about it? $500 million a year? What about 900 million a year? Nope, try $55.7 billion in 2020 with one-third of all adults in the United States, (2) Have you ever thought to yourself what the fu#$ is a multivitamin? I have. There is “no standard or regulatory definition, such as what nutrients they must contain or in what amounts”. That is why ritual is a breath of fresh air.

“The results from a variety of previous studies do not support the practice of multivitamin supplementation for cardiovascular disease and mortality.” -The American Heart Association

Let’s look into who might actually benefit from ritual's multivitamin:

Pregnancy (3)

• We know that folic acid and multivitamins are routinely recommended to pregnant women since maternal vitamin D deficiency may have specific associations with the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) in offspring. Further, maternal vitamin deficiency has also been linked with increased neural tube defects. A case-control cohort study showed maternal exposure to folic acid and multivitamin supplements before and during pregnancy is associated with a reduced risk of ASD in the offspring compared with the offspring of mothers without such exposure.

• For specific dosing requirements, I would speak with your Obstetrician-Gynecologists. As you may need a higher level depending on your specific health needs. It’s important to note that several products are fortified with folic acid. However, it is difficult to quantify the amount vs taking a multivitamin.

Older Population (60 or older) (4)

• As one gets older, gastric acidity tends to decline and atrophic gastritis tends to become more common with age. Thus, one cannot absorb enough of the protein-bound, naturally occurring vitamin B12 in food. This, of course, gets complicated when medications are also involved, as they can interact with many metabolism regulations. Such as proton pump inhibitors and B12 absorption.

Diets

• of course, if you are gluten-free, vegan, low-carb, or paleo you will have some form of nutritional deficiencies. Veganism, for example, you will likely be deficit in calcium iron, zinc, and vitamin B12. You don’t necessarily need a multivitamin. You can find real food that has these missing ingredients (pumps seeds for zinc and spinach for calcium etc...).

Bariatric Surgeries (5)

• No doubt if you fall into this category, you will have already taken in-depth with your bariatric surgeon and team on the risk of vitamin and mineral deficiencies after surgery. This should be tailored to your specific surgery and given specifics on vitamins and minerals.

The verdict on the other stuff

Longer Life? (7,8,9)

• I’m Currently Reading: Four Thousand Weeks Time Management for Mortals —-Oliver Burkeman and the premise is generally that as we become more productive, we have more things to do and a vicious cycle is formed similar to the hedonic treadmill. No wonder, people are spending billions of dollars each year. The promise of a single pill taken each day to extend our lives. You would be a fool not to take one…But alas, if such a pill existed in the world it’s very doubtful that the masses would be privy to such benefits. Indeed, numerous studies have shown that longevity does not increase with taking multivitamins. In some cases, exceeding the recommended dietary allowances (RDA) can cause serious risks including death.

• 🫀The American Heart Association publication: Circulation, recently published in 2018 that “The results from a variety of previous studies do not support the practice of multivitamin supplementation for cardiovascular disease and mortality.”(6) This was after a deliberate comprehensive meta-analysis among other research findings.

References:

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