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By: Susan C. Olmstead
Tasty, colorful gummies are an appealing, easy way to take vitamins and other supplements. Their chewiness somehow makes them feel comforting (thanks to what dieticians call “mouth feel”), and to many people eating a candy-like gummy may be a more satisfying and meaningful experience than swallowing a pill with a glass of water.
The gummy vitamin and supplement market is booming. Sleep aids, stress aids, immunity boosters, vitamins, and all sorts of health and dietary aids are available in gummy form, with some U.S. drugstores devoting as much or more shelf space to gummies as to old-style capsules and pills.
But gummies’ tempting textures, flavors, and colors come at a cost. Thanks to ingredients designed to add to their appeal and a manufacturing process that can lead to uneven benefits, gummies may not be as healthy as traditional unflavored capsules and tablets. Thoughtful consumers may want to consider if it makes sense to choose supplements based on their visual and sensory appeal.
Some companies focus on women as the target market for gummy supplements that include ingredients to promote healthy skin, hair, and nails. Others promise to help with mood, energy, metabolism, libido, joint health, cognition, or digestion. Many gummies are geared toward children, with some promising to help kids stay calm and “engaged.”
After the emergence of COVID-19, consumers became more health-conscious and sought out products with vitamins C and D, which are linked to strengthening immunity, notes market intelligence group SkyQuest’s 2023 report on the gummy market.
Additionally, gummies may be more palatable to children and the elderly, who may have difficulty swallowing pills, according to SkyQuest.
SkyQuest forecasts the gummy vitamin market will be worth more than $9.49 billion by 2028.
Color, Flavor, Texture Add to Appeal
To make them chewy, tasty, attractive, and transportable, gummy supplements include sweeteners, waxes, coloring, and fillers, including:
- Sucrose
- Corn syrup
- Glucose syrup
- Vegetable oils including palm oil, coconut oil, and canola oil
- Carnauba wax
- Artificial dyes
Sensient Food Colors, which makes coloring for foods and beverages, also produces a spray-on coating to make gummies less tacky. On its site, Sensient attributes gummies’ appeal to “chewy texture for novelty sensorial experience, a multitude of flavours, cheery colours for simple indulgence and adorable shapes.”
According to Sensient, consumers associate color with wellness. The company’s consumer research found “vibrant orange can signal healthy doses of Vitamin C, while deeper blue and purple hues can offer a calming effect before even tasting the product.”
Commonly, melatonin gummies to promote sleep are purple or blue, while gummies that claim to boost energy or mood are yellow or orange.
Sensient president Mike Geraghty wrote, “Consumers gravitate towards colour because of our ancestral cravings for nutrient-rich foods, dating back to our days as foragers and hunters where colour in nature, whether red meat or purple wild berries, helped us identify foods that would supply our bodies with the most amount of energy.”
The dyes used in gummy supplements were originally created from tar and are now made from petroleum, according to Angela McCleary, a certified health and nutrition coach in Succasunna, New Jersey. She told The Epoch Times that these dyes have been shown to cause cancer, ADHD, and behavioral effects. They (along with other food additives) are banned in Europe due to these effects, especially in young children. But manufacturers use these additives and dyes in other countries, including the United States, to make foods and supplements more shelf-stable and to enhance their appearance.
“They are marketing them [gummies] very well, so that they look appealing to people. They’re making them to be more visually appealing, especially to kids, but they’re toxic, really,” said Ms. McCleary.
The gummy company Olly states on its website that it employs “a team of culinary and food science experts” to develop “flavors, textures, and sweetening systems that delight your senses and satisfy your cravings for all things indulgent but healthy.”
Food scientists paired with marketers form a force that can be difficult to resist. The promise of potency and pleasure in a pretty package is powerful.
Production Challenges Lead to Uneven Results
Minerals such as iron are often left out of multivitamin gummies because they are difficult to incorporate into this type of supplement, according to SkyQuest.
Also, the contents of gummy supplements tend not to hold up as well as those of regular pills. According to ConsumerLab.com, which tests health and nutrition products, it is notoriously difficult to manufacture gummies—the ingredients in gummies tend to degrade more quickly, and the amount of vitamins and minerals in a gummy is challenging to measure, since the manufacturing process may involve simply spraying the active ingredients onto a candy-like base.
This leads manufacturers to include more of some ingredients than the amount listed on the label, “to help ensure the gummy will continue to provide at least 100% of each listed ingredient throughout its shelf-life, as required by the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration],” according to the ConsumerLab site. “However, this results in products with too much of a vitamin when first produced and a range of declining amounts by the time [customers] consume them.”
Supplement producer SMP (for Supplement Manufacturing Partner) states “gummy vitamins need to be a mixture of chewy, tasty, and still packed with the correct nutrients.” It assures its customers, “These variables are sometimes tough to control, but once the process is done … that outcome can be repetitively produced again and again.”
The FDA does not approve supplements (gummy or not) in the way that it does medications, but it does regulate supplements by periodically inspecting manufacturing facilities, reviewing product labels and other labeling information, and monitoring reports of supplement-related adverse events submitted by companies, health care professionals, and consumers.
GummiWorld, another company that manufactures gummy supplements, claims that a nutritionist, food scientist, doctor of pharmacy, and medical doctor all analyze and test its products before a quality assurance specialist finally approves them. Other companies such as SMP and Makers Nutrition may not employ doctors but do test their ingredients and products in compliance with the current good manufacturing practice regulations required by the FDA.
But a research letter published in April in the Journal of the American Medical Association included an analysis of 25 melatonin gummies and found the actual amount of melatonin in the product ranged from 74 percent to 347 percent of what was claimed on the label.
The researchers noted, “22 of 25 products (88%) were inaccurately labeled, and only 3 products (12%) contained a quantity of melatonin that was within ±10% of the declared quantity.”
This can lead to harmful consequences. The researchers reported that calls to poison control centers in the United States regarding pediatric melatonin ingestions increased 530 percent from 2012 to 2021, and were associated with 27,795 emergency department and clinic visits, 4,097 hospitalizations, 287 intensive care unit admissions, and two deaths.
While some of these overdoses were accidental, others may have been due to children mistaking melatonin gummies for candy.
Even adults can fall into this trap, said Ms. McCleary. She told The Epoch Times, “People are taking more than they’re supposed to because it’s not like you’re taking a supplement. It’s almost like gummies are fun. You’re taking them because you want the health benefits but it’s almost like you’re tricking yourself into thinking they’re just candy.
“Gummies increase the pleasure. And that’s what people look for—they look for pleasure. And if it tastes good, they want more. They’re going to take more than they’re supposed to.”
