Do All Prenatal Vitamins Meet Your RDAs?

We Tested The Top 25 Brands And Found These Trends

Published in

Labdoor

3 min readAug 25, 2016

We analyzed 25 best-selling US prenatal multivitamins to see which ones cover your bases and which ones fall short. While most prenatal multivitamins did well, here are some trends you might not be aware of. We’ll be using 4 popular prenatal vitamins to illustrate our points.

First Steps: If you’re pregnant or planning, talk to your doctor about your diet, and have tests done to detect any nutrient deficiencies. You can then discuss our verified testing data and work together to choose a prenatal multivitamin that’s right for you.

Minerals were low across the board:

None of the 25 vitamins we tested met daily recommendations for calcium or magnesium. Developing babies need calcium for healthy bones. If the pregnant mother isn’t eating enough for the growing fetus, calcium will be taken from her bones, muscles, and teeth and given to the fetus instead. This can cause the mother to experience symptoms like brittle teeth, muscle cramps, and nerve pains.

Magnesium was also low in some products. Low magnesium can cause similar effects including weakness, irregular heartbeats, and premature uterine contractions.

Half of the products we tested did not meet the daily recommendation for iron. Too little iron can cause anemia, or low blood count.

It’s common for women to already have low mineral levels, even more so for women with diabetes. This means that during your pregnancy, you should be extra diligent about getting your minerals in, whether from food or supplements. In case you need help, we’ve tested calcium and magnesium supplements for safety and effectiveness too.

Prenatal multivitamins may run low in other vitamins too:

In the table below, you’ll see that individual products will often run low in certain vitamins. This varies between products, but vitamins B1, B2, D, and K seem to be more commonly low.

B1 is essential for your baby’s brain development. Low B2 can limit your baby’s normal growth and increase the mother’s risk for preeclampsia, or life-threateningly high blood pressure. Babies need enough vitamin D for healthy bone growth and enough vitamin K for normal blood clotting. Research has also recently showed that vitamin D supplements may be especially important for women who begin pregnancy in the winter.

Talk to your doctor

Speak with your doctor regularly about your nutrition needs. If you need help choosing a specific supplement, you can find all of our test results on Labdoor.com.

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