Korean Job Discussion Forums

[nomad-ish]

i was wondering if anyone knew where to buy multi-vitamins, like Centrum? or something similar

does the red door in itaewon usually have them? i went there on sunday, but forgot to look

[winterwawa]

The international clinic in itaewon has a vitatim shop. Anything and everything you need you can get there.

[nomad-ish]

[xCustomx]

Costco has them and they aren't that expensive

[winterwawa]

[TEFLPRAHA]

Hi everyone,
Costco brand vitamins, and Centrum, score very poorly. In the Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements they range from 0-1.5/5.
If you want high quality, you can register as a customer at www.nutriceuticals.usana.com. Then, you call the Korean number (toll free from your cell phone) and have them shipped to you. Takes a day or 2 to arrive. Those vitamins score 5/5. The author of the book evaluated over 1500 brands. Only 4 got a 5/5. He spent something like $35,000 per high scoring brand to run disintegration and purity tests each of the high scores, who consented to being tested.
If you need any help registering, email me. [email protected]
Hope that helps!!

[bacasper]

[TEFLPRAHA]

[idonojacs]

Sorry, but vitamins are vitamins.

If you were to go to a biology or chemistry department at a good university, you would find a catalog for bulk chemicals, including vitamins. There, you would get pure vitamins, not in pills. But that's what they put in pills. A few chemical companies make the vitamins in pure form, sell them to the vitamin pill manufacturers and they put them in the binder etc for pills or capsules and sell them to you.

I seriously doubt a company like Usana makes their own vitamins as chemicals. You would need a whole bunch of chemical plants to do this. Also, they are not in Korea, so you would still have to pay shipping and duty.

I suspect the tests you are referring to refer to the rate at which the tablet dissolves. This is an old ploy to get people to buy very, very expensive vitamins. If you want to find out whether a tablet dissolves well, start by putting one broken in half in a glass of water. You need to break them because most are enteric coated, which would not dissolve in water. But the vitamin is going to go into Hcl, stomach acid, so I doubt it will not dissolve.

Every vitamin, at least in the U.S., will list the amount of the actual ingredient, such as calcium, if you read the label correctly.

I glanced at some back posts by this poster, and they seem to have a lot of stuff that would mislead the gullible or uninformed. Just about anything you put in your mouth in the U.S. is regulated in some way, including vitamins. They aren't as regulated as prescription medicine, but you can't just throw anyting in a tablet and claim they are something they aren't. I have never seen undigested vitamins in the toilet. Kernels of corn, sometimes, vitamins, no. And how would sewage plant operator know they were vitamins? What a bunch of nonsense. I have heard all of these claims about a dozen times before, always from multilevel marketers, starting with Amway, hawking overpriced vitamins.

The Costco vitamins in the States are fine. I've been using them for years. But I also get some other stuff.

The Costco vitamins in Korea suck (this ain't Uncle Sam's Costco). They are a whole different mix. Vitamin E is in 200 iu tablets, and are expensive. Vitamin A, 200 tablets, about 20,000 won (I am going from memory, as I did not buy them) -- but they are healthy for your eyes, the label says. All vitamin A is healthy for your eyes. It is perhaps the cheapest vitamin you can buy in the States -- a similar bottle there would cost about $2. Here it is second only to vitamin C for being expensive. You can easily spend 50,000 won for a medium size bottle of vitamin C here at someplace like Lotte that would cost less than $10 back in the States. Koreans desperately need vitamin A; it is found naturally in liver, but I have yet to see any liver of any sort or form here.

So if you are coming to Korea, bring a year's supply of vitamins. And as for herbal supplements, they are non-existent where I am, which is not-Seoul Korea.

But, if you are already here, the Costco multivitamin blend is about as good as you are going to find here, pricewise. EMart wants about 20,000 won for a small bottle of mutivitamins with an incomplete mix of about 8 vitamins.

Why are vitamins in Korea so ridiculously expensive, and why are they so rare? Do Koreans actually think they are getting all their vitamins from their paltry diet? Is the white rice at least vitamin enriched, like it is in the States? I doubt it. And if it is, it wouldn't matter if they wash the rice before cooking it.

[NightSky]

[idonojacs]

That is pretty funny.

I guess these things take time. We have to remember where Korea was 50 or even 20 years ago. Perhaps the marketplace can help educate them.

I'm not saying vitamins are the answer to everything, but I can't imagine how the typical Koean diet, especially of modern kids, could have all the vitamins and trace minerals they need. Taking vitamins isn't going to hurt them, and it could help these kids grow up healthier, and adults stay healthier.

Heck, we might see fewer kids with colds if they took vitamins, especially vitamin A, which is vital for healthy lungs and skin in general. Eyes are a relative minor part of this vitamin's role. Vitamin A and selenium are very important for avoiding infectious bugs like the cold and flu.

I just did a quick search, and see that vitamin a is also found in oily fish, like mackerel, which I see plenty of cans of here. So maybe they are getting some.

http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthydiet/nutritionessentials/vitaminsandminerals/vitamina/

And now that I think of it, sweet potato is a good source of beta carotene. So I may be overstating the problem.

On the other hand, when I checked the data from a U.S. site, I found that 100 grams of canned mackerel only has 433 iu of vitamin A, less than one-tenth the minimum daily requirement of 5,000 iu.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl

Sweet potatoes, on the other hand, can provide three times the mdr:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl

But not everyone can convert the vegetable form of vitamin A, beta carotene, into the usable form.

The bottom line on the vitamin question is that Americans in the 60s today look more like Americans in their 30s or 40s, 50 or 70 years ago. I think vitamins are one of several reasons people look younger and feel younger as they age these days.

[Komichi]

How does OneSource rate on the scale? It has plenty of Selenium, Chromium, and even Ginseng.

[TEFLPRAHA]

[TEFLPRAHA]

Hi Komichi,
One Source - it depends on which one. If you can be more specific, I'll look up the one you use.
Otherwise, I can tell you that they list 6 OneSource products, 4 score 0.5 and 2 score 2/5.
Cheers,
teflpraha

[jazblanc77]

At the store.