Bariatric vitamins and supplements can be found online in several different forms.  You can easily find the chewable variety, liquid, pills, and capsules. Unfortunately, the ones that are chewable and flavorful have added fillers that interfere with absorption.

Choosing your vitamins because they taste or look good is a bad idea if you’re a bariatric patient. Chewable, “tasty” vitamins become that way only when the producer adds absorption-hampering fillers to them. Filler may make your vitamin easier to swallow, more tasty, or more attractive–but it also makes your nutrients harder to digest. The only purpose of a good vitamin should be that it gets the job done. Supplements with filler simply don’t fit the bill as effectively.

Common Fillers in Bariatric Supplements

Most fillers are chemicals that should never come anywhere near your stomach! These are commonly listed in the ingredients section under the supplement facts:

• Sodium benzoate 
• Crospovidone
• Titanium dioxide
• Sodium starch glycolate
• Magnesium stearate

The list of additives goes on and on for many products. None of these ingredients are necessary and none of them are good for you. There is no reason at all for you to be taking a supplement that contains anything more than the vitamins and supplements themselves.

Stearates in Vitamins

Magnesium stearate as one additive that needs to be looked at carefully. Stearates are fillers used by many manufacturers to hold together the elements found in pills or capsules. But this binding together of the nutrients makes them more difficult to absorb. Although many vitamins have magnesium stearates, they are neither necessary nor healthy.

The public needs to be made aware of manufacturers using these fillers. Wellsphere, a popular website for knowledge about your health, states clearly their opinion on stearates:

While the companies that produce Vitamins and Supplements may want you to believe that the use of Magnesium Stearate and Stearic Acid in your pills is safe, they are not fooling anyone. You owe it to yourself and your future well being to go to the cupboard right now and remove any pills in there that might contain anything with either of these dangerous fillers in them. The market has supported this shoddy, irresponsible production for too long and the health of the industry’s consumers should not need to suffer for it.

Your goal as a weight loss surgery patient is to lose weight and become as healthy as you can. Avoiding these fillers in your bariatric vitamins and supplements is a big step to getting you there and keeping you there.