Puritan Pride's Plant Based Vitamins

By Jeanne Grunert

Puritan plant based vitamins, manufactured by Puritans Pride, are vitamins suitable for vegetarians. Vegetarians eat no meat and many choose not to eat any animal products at all. For people following a vegetarian diet, it's essential to choose products not made with animal parts, and Puritan plant based vitamins fit the bill.

Puritan Plant Based Vitamins made by Puritan's Pride

Puritans Pride is a Long Island, New York based vitamin company. They've been in business for over 40 years and are known for providing quality vitamins at affordable prices. Although one may wonder if the vitamins live up to their quality promises, Puritan's Pride brand vitamins meet both FDA and U.S. Pharmacopeia standards for potency, consistency and quality. The company offers a low, flat rate shipping of $4.95 per box, making it an attractive mail order source for vitamins and supplements for people throughout the United States.

Puritan's Pride Website

Their website offers nearly every vitamin, mineral, herbal and dietary supplement possible, as well as herbal teas, aromatherapy products, and vitamin or herbal-based personal care products. The company offers a convenient automatic refill option for people who take supplements regularly. Customers who sign up to receive the company's email notifications will also receive significant discounts, such as Puritan's Pride's typical Buy One, Get Two Free sale.

Selection of Plant Based Vitamins

The company offer 232 vitamins and supplements marked as vegetarian, plus a shorter list of certified kosher products free from shellfish. All of the ingredient labels can be viewed on the company's website, making it easy to double check each vitamin supplement to ensure it meets your dietary needs.

Among the many vegetarian, plant-based vitamins and supplements are:

Vitamin C with Bioflavanoids and Rose Hips: Rose hips are the seed pods of rose flowers. They're a folk remedy for colds, and with good reason; they're rich in natural vitamin C.
B Complex and Vitamin B 12: Many vegetarians are low in vitamin B12, so finding a source of plant-based B-12 is a great find indeed. Vitamin B12 is most easily acquired from animal-based sources. Puritan's Pride Vitamin B12 and B complex formulas list Brewer's Yeast as the source of vitamin B12, and the other ingredients listed on the label are all vegetable-based.
Melatonin: Melatonin is a naturally produced hormone that regulates sleep and waking. This natural supplement promises only vegetable and plant-based sources of ingredients.
Chelated Calcium, Magnesium and Zinc: Many calcium supplements get their calcium from oyster shells and other shellfish, discarded from the food processing industry. For vegetarians, vegans and people following religious dietary practices, shellfish cannot be eaten. This particular supplement includes calcium from natural mineral sources. The company states that the calcium dissolves within 60 minutes of ingestion.

The company's herbal supplements are of course plant-based. They offer pill forms as well as liquid tinctures.

All of the company's plant-based vitamins use a vegetable base of cellulose for the pill covering instead of gelatin, which is an animal-based coating for capsules. Many vegetable extracts are used in the manufacturing of each supplement.

Are Plant Based Vitamins Healthier?

Often people assume that because something is plant-based, it's either safer, better or healthier. With vitamins, this may not be the case. Vitamin absorption and use by the human body often depends upon other things ingested with the vitamin. Many vitamins, for example, need fats in order to be properly assimilated. Nature packages vitamins best in food sources, so whenever possible, eat a whole foods based diet as close to the natural source of the food as possible, avoiding fortified and packaged products which denature the original vitamins. The vitamins in an orange or banana, for example, exist with antioxidants, fiber and minerals, which all contribute to good health better than a vitamin C or potassium pill.