University Daily Kansan / Monday, April 17, 1989
9
New York database contains information on ingredients in 10,000 vitamin products
by Steven Wolcott Kansan staff writer
For students who are worried about growing pseudo-pods out of their abdomen or breaking out in purple spots from taking a vitamin without knowing the ingredients, there's now a toll-free hotline to call.
L&H Vitamins, a New York-based national distributor of vitamins and nutritional supplements, has started a computer database called Vitabank.
The system has information about the ingredients of the more than 10,000 products distributed by L&H through its mail order catalogs. The system can be accessed by calling 1-800-221-1152.
"Many people are concerned about the types of nutritional products they swallow. They want to
know what's in it," said Lloyd H. Marmon, president of L&H Vitamins.
"The typical vitamin label has small print and is hard to read," Marmon said. "Many of our customers are older people who have trouble reading the fine print. Our system helps them out."
He said Vitabank was the nation's first computer database that could give consumers specific ingredient information about vitamins and nutritional supplements.
Besides the chemical ingredients, the system has information about whether the product contains artificial colors or flavors, sugar, salt, wheat, milk, corn, yeast, gluten, starch, or animal yaculties. All are typical allergy reaction ingredients, Marmon said.
John Baughman, chief pharmacist at Watkins Memorial Health
Center, said allergic reactions to vitamins were not common, but that they did occur.
"It's difficult to predict who would have one," Baughman said. "The only way to find out would be through accidental ingestion."
He said knowing the ingredients of a vitamin or nutritional supplement probably wouldn't help the average consumer, but that information could be important to an emergency room doctor or a poison control center.
"Generally, you can find information on the ingredients of vitamins fairly easily," Baughman said. "But information on nutritional supplements is harder to find."
He said some vitamins could cause health problems if the recommended dosage level was exceeded, leading to fat-soluble vitamin toxicity, which is vitamin poisoning.
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