Anant Agarwal
11-Aug-2025
Are your favourite wellness brands telling you the truth?
By Anant Agarwal – Health Coach and Clinical Research Scientist and founder of Infinite Health
Multivitamins are everywhere. From airport kiosks to wellness apps, they’re marketed as the modern-day health essential, promising energy, immunity, glowing skin, and sharper focus, all packed into a single capsule. For many people, taking one has become as habitual as brushing their teeth.
As someone immersed in clinical research and patient care, I believe it's time we ask a more nuanced question: What exactly are we taking, and do we actually need it?
To be clear, I’m not against multivitamins. They have their place. But in today’s wellness culture, they’re often used as a shortcut, an easy fix for deeper nutritional and lifestyle issues. Most people assume they’re “covering all bases” when, in reality, many multivitamin formulas are underdosed and misaligned with individual needs.
Take, for instance, one of India’s most popular over-the-counter multivitamin brands, marketed heavily on social media. It contains 24 nutrients, which sounds impressive until you examine the actual dosages. The vitamin D content is just 400 IU, while therapeutic needs often range between 1000 and 2000 IU for the average urban Indian. Vitamin B12 is present at only 1.2 micrograms, which is well below the doses often required to correct deficiencies in people with fatigue, mood issues, or plant-based diets.
Then there's the form of nutrients used. Magnesium is included as magnesium oxide, which has notoriously poor absorption. Iron is present in trace amounts, which might be insufficient for someone with anaemia and excessive for someone who doesn’t need it. It becomes clear that these formulations are more about label appeal than clinical effectiveness.
Over the past few years, I’ve worked with countless patients who rely on multivitamins but continue to experience symptoms like low energy, hair fall, poor sleep, or weak immunity. When we investigate through blood testing, we often discover specific deficiencies in vitamin D, B12, iron, or zinc, none of which were addressed adequately by their daily multivitamin.
That’s why I always advocate for testing first. A one-size-fits-all approach to nutrition rarely works. Your requirements depend on your age, diet, medical history, lifestyle, and even where you live. A vegetarian software engineer in Mumbai may need a different protocol than a non-vegetarian homemaker in Lucknow or a weekend athlete in Hyderabad.
Multivitamins can serve as a short-term backup, especially when diets are limited or erratic. But they shouldn’t be the foundation of your health strategy. Nutrition should be built on food first, and supplementation should be personalised based on actual data.
In a growing market where wellness brands are focusing more on packaging than precision, consumers need to look beyond the aesthetic. Check the dosages, assess the ingredient forms, and ask whether it aligns with your real needs. Because your health isn’t generic. Your supplements shouldn’t be either.
Cover Credits: Freepik
Dr. Rohan Palshetkar
