DAILY DOSE: : Sale of Vitamins in 1-Day Packets Gaining in Favor

Construction worker Delphin Iman of Moreno Valley picked up a quick breakfast at 6:30 one recent morning at the Minute King mini-market on Irvine Avenue just below Bristol Street in Newport Beach. He walked out with milk, a doughnut--and a handful of pills.

Those pills--actually seven tablets and one capsule in a variety of textures, shapes and colors--were sold in a neat cellophane packet attached to a blue card marked “for sportsmen.” The ingredients: “23 high-potency vitamins and minerals,” supposedly enough to satisfy an active man’s daily vitamin needs.

Iman’s packet is just one of dozens that today’s health-conscious public is being offered in a marketing ploy that is turning even mini-marts, liquor stores and college bookstores into vitamin boutiques. Iman chose the “sportsman” packet that morning. He could just as well have selected the “stress” or “super stress” packets. A fourth choice was marked “for women.” Each, presumably, was tailored to a specific audience: increased calcium and iron for women, for instance.

Maybe half a dozen of the little packets go across the mini-market’s checkout counter each day, mostly between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., clerk Lois Shelton said. “People who work in the trades and a lot of businessmen buy them,” she said. “They stop in and get a cup of coffee and juice, or maybe a beer,” she said. “Students come in at night from UC Irvine. Sundays I sell to golfers.”

The Irvine Avenue mini-market is the kind that draws a mixed crowd, Shelton added: “Gardeners and construction people in the morning, Jack Youngblood and Reggie Jackson every now and then at night.”

For the health conscious, she said, “It’s a corner where people can come in, grab their grapefruit juice and a vitamin, and they’re gone. It’s mostly a convenience.”

A quick random sample disclosed that in Orange County today, the mini-market shopper can choose from among at least half a dozen brands of daily vitamin-mineral packets. Under each label, there are up to four different types of packets--each containing four to 12 tablets and capsules. Most packets offer to fight stress or increase energy; some are tailored to specific audiences such as men, women or sportsmen. One proclaims itself a “super energy anti-aging formula.”

The packets also are varied in appearance: Pills come in round, oblong and oval shapes; they’re beige, yellow, green, red, gray, speckled and plain; some are tiny, some large. One throat-threatening handful was immediately dubbed the “Rambo Pack” by a dubious viewer.

Sales of the individual packets are “going great” in Orange County, according to Tom Basso, whose TJR Distributing Co. in Orange has been handling them for three years. Basso supplies the vitamins, along with candy, cigarettes and other checkout-counter goodies, to liquor stores, hotels and a couple of community colleges. Business in the single-day packets picks up about 5% every couple of months, he said. One reason it doesn’t grow even faster, Basso believes, is because “when people get hooked on them, they get the 30-day supplies.”

Those who travel to health food stores, gyms or other merchandisers to get the daily packets in 30-, 60- or 90-day supplies may find the choice of formulas available to them has expanded dramatically: There are, for instance, packets supposedly formulated for those concerned about heart or prostate trouble, prenatal care, brain power, arthritis, acne, beauty, obesity; there are “athletic” formulas for those fighting “pre-workout blues,” for women who are into body building and power lifting, for those who just want some extra energy.

Even the upscale I. Magnin department store recently got on the bandwagon, taking out a half-page newspaper ad introducing the “new Oublier Vitamins.”

“Each packet treats your skin and body to the complete balanced combination of vitamins, minerals, calcium and electrolytes it needs, geared to your skin type, normal, oily or dry,” the ad reads. The vitamins, promised the ad--which is illustrated by a reclining model tilting a cellophane packet of five tablets and capsules toward her open mouth--”work from the inside out to help keep your skin’s cell-reproduction going strong.”

Almost all formulas--whether they’re sold at Mini King, I. Magnin or some place in between--appear to include a basic list of vitamins and minerals, though quantities of each may vary from fractions of the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance (USRDA) to thousands of times that figure. Many formulas also include exotic “extras” most often offered through health food stores: things like bee pollen, ginseng, lecithin and alfalfa; ground up “glandulars” from organs such as liver, spleen, testes, ovary and pancreas; herbs such as Euphrasia, and guarana.

No one formula quite duplicates another. Each formula, each combination of tablets and capsules, appears to offer--subliminally as well as directly--its unique boon to health and vitality.

What it all gets down to, said UCI’s Mary Gilly, assistant professor of administration in the Graduate School of Management, is something called “segmentation strategy.”

Five years ago, she said, “vitamins were marketed demographically, segmenting for children and maybe women and men.” But that technique was fairly unsophisticated, she added. “As manufacturers learned more of the needs of particular segments, they could move more into benefit segmentation.”

That means a customer now finds products “to help prevent osteoporosis, or to prevent high blood pressure,” Gilly said. Such products can “arouse latent concern for health,” she added. And because the average customer finds it “really difficult to walk into a drugstore and know which vitamins will be beneficial,” pre-packaged formulas often seem to give the answer.

Puts Packages Together

One Orange County manufacturer, Beverly International of Laguna Hills, has developed what owner Jim Heflin terms a “several-million-dollar-a-year” international business putting together those tailored packages, along with other nutritional supplements specifically designed for health clubs, racquetball clubs, gyms and the like. His 15 packets have names like “muscle,” “ultra competitor” and “Hercules.”

“I think we probably originated the idea in the body-building gym industry,” he said, although he believes the first company ever to peddle the daily vitamin packets was Lindberg Nutrition, back in the 1960s.

Actually, the very first daily packet of vitamins--as far as anyone at Lindberg Nutrition knows--was put together 40 years ago, according to company spokesman Mike Herron in Los Angeles. It all happened, he said, because of founder Gladys Lindberg’s success at turning her own children from “weakly” youngsters into sturdy ones through good nutrition and vitamins.

Other mothers asked her to recommend vitamins for their youngsters. One of those mothers was blind, and Lindberg worried how the woman would tell one vitamin bottle from the next. So she hit upon a scheme: “She took some wax paper and wrapped all the woman would need for one day in the wax paper,” said Herron. “That’s how the packet first originated, for a blind lady.”

Thirty-seven years ago Lindberg opened her first store, Herron added, and individual vitamin packets were among the first items sold. Those packets, of course, “were made for everyone, not just body builders.” Today, Lindberg has specialized their packets--but even so, Herron said, the company has avoided the megadoses offered by some companies. (Ten times the USRDA of any vitamin or mineral is considered a megadose, according to vitamin experts.)

Backs Mega-Vitamins

Some of those packs do get dramatically “mega”: Beverly’s “Hercules Pak,” for instance, hits heavily on the B vitamins: 300 milligrams or 19,998% of the RDA for B-1; 300 milligrams or 15,000% for B-6; 300 milligrams or 17,646% of B-2. It also offers 2,000 milligrams or 3,334% of the RDA of Vitamin C. This particular pack, said owner Heflin, is not suggested for everybody: “It is primarily for world-class athletes who are training to the ultimate, working out three, four or five days; who are diet conscious, body-fat conscious and weight conscious.” Hercules has 16 tablets.

“I’m a proponent of mega-vitamins, even though that may get me a lot of flack from the medical profession,” Heflin said. Anyway, he argued, the medical profession may not always be right: “The average doctor has only had about three hours of nutrition.”

As Heflin predicted, however, the medical profession does look askance at self-dosers of vitamins and minerals.

“Nobody, except on advice of a competent physician, should take more than 100% of the RDA of anything,” said nationally recognized vitamin expert Dr. Victor Herbert, chief of hematology and nutrition research labs at Bronx Veterans Hospital in New York and co-author of “Vitamins and Health Food: the Great American Hustle,” just out in soft cover (George F. Stickley Co., Philadelphia).

Even the water soluble vitamins, like the Bs, “can do a great deal of harm before you urinate out the excess,” he said. “For instance, 100 milligrams of B-6 taken daily over a year might very well produce nerve damage.” Research by an English physician showed that such an amount taken by a pregnant woman could produce deformed offspring, he added.

“The best advice to the public is to get vitamins and minerals from food, not pills,” Heflin said.

Closer to home, William Jarvis, president of the National Council Against Health Frauds and professor of health education and chairman of the public health science department of Loma Linda University, recalled an FDA study a few years ago that concluded the nation’s No. 2 health misunderstanding was the idea that vitamins give extra energy.

“They have nothing to do with energy,” said Jarvis, “but they do have a placebo effect”--in other words, if you believe a handful of pills will give you a rush, they probably will.

Some of the exotic ingredients added into some formulas may be downright dangerous, Jarvis said. Bee pollen, for instance, “is potentially harmful, one of the most allergenic materials known,” he said. And, he added, herbs can have drug effects.

Some other ingredients are probably simply worthless: the glandulars, for instance--things like ground up heart, testes, adrenals and pituitary. “By offering these, they are playing on the most primitive myth,” Jarvis said, “that if you eat the heart of a lion, you will be courageous; sex organs, you will be sexy . . . . “

“The fact is,” he added, “when those things hit your stomach, you digest them just like a hamburger.”

There’s a curious paradox, suggested Sheila Flynn, registered dietitian at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, in “the health nuts who are so afraid of chemicals in their food, but who start playing around with vitamins and minerals that could have serious consequences.”

Vitamins, she contended, “have become a major ripoff in this country.” Still, she admitted, even her own friends who take vitamins “are not going to listen to me.”

“They say, ‘I have more energy.’ ”

And, of course, there are testimonials. For example, Katy Boucher, 34, salesperson for a Carson insulation company, is sold on one four-pill formula; it is a good mix of vitamins and minerals, she believes. “I’m real hooked on them,” Boucher said. “I’ve been taking them three years, and I’ve been pretty healthy.” When she feels “real drained,” Boucher said, she takes a second dose when she gets home from work--and it helps. If she’s been partying the night before, the four pills help clear the head. If she forgets the pills for a few days, “my skin breaks out.” She wouldn’t consider stopping.

Some enthusiasts make much more extreme claims for their favorites:

“Try those,” suggested the assistant manager at a south Orange County mini-market, pointing to a foil-wrapped package hanging with other vitamin selections. “For 30 minutes or an hour, you’ll feel good, just kind of stronger.” They’ll cure a hangover, as well, he said. Dropping his voice, the salesman advised, “They’re just like a little cocaine.”

That particular pack was, for some reason, the favorite of high school students who dropped in for a vitamin pickup, the salesman said.

Unlike the other vitamin packs, this one contained three identical pills. Major ingredients, it turned out, were Vitamin C, fructose and caffeine. Each tablet, said the package, included three times the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C; it failed to note the quantity of caffeine.

Joan Bush, bookstore manager at Golden West College in Huntington Beach, offers the more traditional packets and reported that students do buy them--maybe a dozen are sold each day. She takes the vitamins, too--but buys them in 30-day supplies to save money.

Yet, daily-pack supplements are losing some of their supporters.

Gary Vitti, trainer for the Lakers, said his team used to have a deal with a vitamin supplement company, but the players are no longer getting the supplements.

“We feel--and all the research I read indicates--that you really do not need to take a vitamin if you eat a well-balanced diet,” Vitti said. Megadoses of fat soluble substances can cause toxic effects in the body, he said; water soluble megadoses “create very expensive urine.”

Besides, taking a pill--even a vitamin pill--won’t “win an NBA championship,” Vitti said.

UCI bookstore supply buyer Kathy Redmond said that sales of vitamin/mineral packs were bigger 1 1/2 to two years ago. “People now are more into buying bottles.”

John Bushman, an Orange County public information officer, said he used to buy the little daily packs, “but I don’t buy them any more.” He has settled on four bottles of favorite supplements. “They’re a lot less expensive and more condensed.”

“Anytime a retailer gets offered 40% profit--like they’re doing with those daily vitamin packets--you know it’s a fad that won’t stay around,” said one mini-market manager. He is, he admitted, not a fan of vitamins.

But most businessmen have a different attitude, suggests marketing expert Gilly: “I guess they would argue that if we don’t know it will hurt and think it may help, and if it offers something that will allay the concerns people have, they should be able to buy it.”