Silver Women 50+ Multivitamin

Centrum Silver Women 50+ is the women's version of the drugstore multivitamin behind the largest multivitamin trials, and it covers the basics well for women past menopause. One smooth-coated tablet supplies 24 vitamins and minerals plus lutein, including 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 (above the 600 to 800 IU RDA), 50 mcg of vitamin B12, 150 mcg of iodine, 400 mcg of folic acid and 15 mg of zinc. Supplemental B12 is not bound to food protein, so older adults who absorb B12 poorly from food generally absorb it normally. It also contains 8 mg of iron, the RDA for women over 50, so it is low-iron rather than iron-free.

The research is its selling point, with caveats. In COSMOS, one Centrum Silver tablet given to both men and women did not lower cancer, cardiovascular events or deaths over 3.6 years, but three cognitive substudies found small gains in memory and global cognition that a pooled analysis equated to about two years less cognitive aging. Effects were modest, participants were mostly white, and the women's formula itself was not tested. The earlier Physicians' Health Study II, in men, found 8 percent fewer cancers but no heart or memory benefit, and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force still calls the evidence insufficient to weigh multivitamins for heart disease or cancer prevention.

The trade-offs: 300 mg of calcium covers only a quarter of the 1,200 mg women over 50 need, selenium is just 22 mcg, and the tablet is colored with Red 40 Lake, Blue 2 Lake and titanium dioxide. There is no USP or NSF certification. At $20.12 for 200 tablets at Walmart, it costs about 10 cents a day. Buyers mostly call it easy to swallow, though some find the tablet large or report nausea.