I have written about Centrum’s false advertising in the past. Here is an excerpt of an article which was highlighted in a past issue of Health Zingers.

“Recently the makers of Centrum® began a campaign where a big dump truck backs up and cascades many hundreds of “other” vitamin bottles to the ground. Then the well-groomed man with the deep assuring voice says something along these lines, “All of these other brands are about quantity; but not Centrum. Centrum is about important combinations of nutrients like vitamin C to regenerate E and vitamin D to help calcium absorption and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!!! The impression you get is that Centrum is special. Although they are very careful not to say it, they imply that Centrum is the only one of those hundreds of bottles to provide these important nutrient combinations. They even tell you if your vitamin does not include these combinations you should consider Centrum.

Let me ask you a number of questions. First, have you ever seen any multivitamin that does not contain vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin D, or calcium? Of course you have not. Every multivitamin on earth has these “important nutrient combinations.” So, is Centrum really special as they imply? Nope. My last question is what do you call it when someone intentionally misleads you? I know what I call it.”

Now they are at it again. Centrum’s newest false advertising marquees a bunch of annoying people (that is my personal opinion) dressed up in foam squares with the names of vitamins and minerals printed on the front. They proclaim that Centrum has been re-formulated as it is called “New Formula Centrum”. The word “New” implies that Centrum is now “Better” than before. Again, they are VERY CAUTIOUS not to claim this as they know it would lead to law suits. But, they know that the implication provided by the word “New” is enough to get the job of misleading people done.

So, what is so misleading? First, on T.V. they claim that the New Formula Centrum has more vitamin C to work with vitamin E. The new formula has exactly 30 mg more of vitamin C than the old formula for a total of 90 mg of vitamin C. And, it has the exact same amount of poor quality, unnatural vitamin E (dl-alpha tocopherol) as it did before.

Wow!! 30 mg more of vitamin C for a total of 90 mg! Do you really think 30 more milligrams for a total of 90 mg will have any clinically significant benefit when people take 1,000 mg or much higher amounts of vitamin C to help with colds and as an antioxidant supplement? No one does, including the makers of Centrum. But they strongly imply that this falsehood is true. They also marquee vitamins B6 and B12, but the amounts of these important B vitamins have not changed at all in the “New Formulation”!

The amazing thing is that they also dress one goof-ball up as zinc to tell you how important this mineral is to your health. The problem is that they actually DECREASED the amount of zinc from the “Old” formula from 15 mg to only 11 mg! How can they actually lower the amount of zinc in the “New” formula while proclaiming the mineral’s importance all at the same time? Talk about misleading.

They know that the majority of people out there know absolutely nothing about vitamins (including most doctors). This misleading advertising will definitely and unfortunately sway those not in “the know.” The question I ask is why do the makers of Centrum have to resort to deception in order to sell their product? The fact that they do speaks volumes about the quality of the product.

If you are one of those people who think that there is no difference between store-bought and doctor quality vitamins, I urge you to download or listen to The Vitamin Answer Book CD.

The Bottom Line

I find it humorous that Centrum makes this statement, “No wonder why Centrum is the number one doctor recommended multivitamin.” I wonder! This shows why you should always ask your doctor if they have any expertise in the field of vitamins and supplementation before taking their recommendation. If not, you will get the number one doctor recommendation. Maybe, it should be called Number 2.