Hiya Health Vitamins: The Kids’ Vitamins Our Dietitians Choose For Their Families
9 min read
When choosing the right multivitamin for your kids, you have a lot of options. Unfortunately, most of the vitamins marketed for children can have processed and questionable ingredients that actually aren’t that great for your child.
If you are on your search for the best multivitamin for your child, you’ve likely come up with more questions than answers. Does my child need a multivitamin? Which multivitamin is best? What vitamins and nutrients should be included?
When you’re first diving into getting these answers it can feel overwhelming! How do you know which resources to trust, where do you get the best information, and can you even believe the marketing claims of the vitamin brands out there?
When Hiya started their company, they didn’t like the answers they were getting about the kids vitamins available on the market. The founders of Hiya started to look at the ingredients in their kids’ vitamins, they realized that most kids multivitamins were more or less candy in disguise, filled with sugar, artificial flavors, colors, and processed ingredients.
Wanting a better vitamin for kids everywhere, they set out to make their own, and that’s how Hiya was born! Below is my Hiya kids multivitamins review: all about the vitamins, why I love them and feed them to my children, and common questions and answers about the popular children’s multivitamins.
Do Registered Dietitians Take Vitamins?
While we can’t speak for all registered dietitians, our team of three dietitians plus two other full-time staff members do take some dietary supplements. Our kids do, too.
As a team of registered dietitians who have made it our mission to help people return to real-food nutrition in a non-dogmatic way, we of course have a strong belief in the healing and thriving power of eating more whole and low-processed foods. And at the same time, we also recognize that life sometimes (often!) can get in the way of that, and that is especially true for toddlers, kids, and teens. This is where dietary supplements can help.
Here’s what we do: Each of us spends time planning most of our weekly meals in advance to ensure we’re eating a variety of food groups and meeting most of our nutrient requirements through the foods we eat. As a group, we don’t take many dietary supplements, with the exception of vitamin D, omega 3s, and magnesium, which are three nutrients commonly lacking in many peoples’ diets, including ours. Some of us also take a greens powder and some of us also take a daily probiotic.
And for our kids: On our team, our 10 kids who have tried Hiya vitamins vary in every way. As a group, our kids range in ages from babies to teenagers. Some of them are fairly picky eaters who enjoy only a small group of consistent foods while others are more adventurous and willingly eat almost anything we send their way. And many of them fall somewhere in between, having days when they have big hunger and happily eat what they’re served and days where they turn their noses up at almost everything and inspect each bite for any teensy offenders. Each of them has food and flavor preferences and a few of them try to avoid certain food allergens. We know this probably sounds consistent with most families out there.
Try Hiya Probiotic & Save 50% On Your 1st Order
Do Kids Need To Take A Multivitamin?
The short answer is no, not all kids need to take a multivitamin. Kids who readily eat a variety of foods from a variety of food groups a few times each day most likely do not need to supplement their diet with a multivitamin. However, parents know that every child is different and kids also go through different eating phases and stages, which is a normal part of their growth and learning about foods.
Many types of kids would benefit from taking a multivitamin. Those include:
- Picky eaters who eat only a few foods and not very many fruits and vegetables
- Kids who don’t eat regular meals
- Kids who eat a lot of highly processed foods, which are low in vitamins and minerals, or get most of their calories from fast foods and sugary foods
- Children with chronic medical conditions that affect nutrient absorption, such as asthma or digestive problems
- Kids who eat special diets, such as dairy free, vegetarian, vegan, and/or gluten free
Additionally, kids who have big inconsistencies in their food intake could benefit from taking a multivitamin. While it is normal for kids to eat a lot at one meal and a little at the next, only parents have that wide-lens view at your child’s food intake over a week’s time. Offering a kid’s multivitamin can provide peace of mind that your child is getting all the essential vitamins and minerals that they need while also doing no harm. The human body is really good at excreting any excess water-soluble vitamins and minerals through urine and storing any excess fat-soluble vitamins in the liver for later use, so feeding kids too much of an essential micronutrient is typically not an issue.
Why Our Dietitian Team Approves Of Hiya Vitamins
The short of it is that we like the quality of these vitamins. We like that:
- there’s no added sugars
- an organic fruit-and-vegetable blend is included
- it has 15 essential nutrients support our kids’ wellness
Other reasons we approve of Hiya kids vitamins are that they don’t contain artificial ingredients, such as artificial colors, flavors, or sweeteners. Finally, we love that these vitamins are formulated by a company that ONLY makes kids vitamins. Pediatricians, registered dietitian nutritionists, scientists, and parents were all consulted in the creation of Hiya vitamins.
Why Our Kids Approve Of Hiya Vitamins
They taste good. Our kids have one thing in mind when it comes to taking vitamins: Does it taste good?
We’ve been giving our kids Hiya vitamins for almost 6 months now so we of course consulted them for this Hiya vitamins review. All of our kids who have tried Hiya vitamins, who fall in the age range of 2 to 16, give them their approval for taste. In fact, they often want to take more than just one! Not only that, but we find that they are actually excited to take these vitamins and ask for them every day. It doesn’t hurt that each kid gets their own bright yellow bottle of their own personal vitamins (kids love something that is their very own). They also loved using the stickers, which come in every first order, to add their names and decorations to the multivitamin bottles.
Among the 10 kids on our team who have tried Hiya vitamins, 8 of them take them every day or very often. Of the two who don’t take them when offered, one of them doesn’t like chewable vitamins and the other is a teenager who takes a different multivitamin.
How Does A Hiya Vitamins Subscription Work?
Hiya kids vitamins get shipped right to your door. When you create an account at hiyahealth.com, you can select if you would like to get a monthly shipment of the Hiya Multivitamin, Hiya Probiotic, Hiya Bedtime sleep supplement, or all three. You also select how many kids are in your household (from 1 to 5) who would each need their own monthly refill.
The original shipment contains your starter kit, which includes the first month’s worth of vitamins (30 chewables), as well as the refillable glass container. You also get two pages of stickers so each child can personalize their vitamin container (we love this cute feature, and our kids do, too!). The auto shipment of 30 refill vitamins arrives in a small non-plastic pouch once per month. Shipping is always free, and the terms are great: you can pause or cancel any time.
- 1st order: Refillable glass container with stickers and 1 month’s supply (30 chewable vitamins)
- Once/month thereafter: 1 month’s refill pouch of kids multivitamins (30 chewable vitamins)
