Are Aldi Esssential Health Women’s Vitamins any good?

Aldi has recently added a range of vitamins with a price tag of just $12.99. But what exactly is in them, and are they any good?

We benchmarked Aldi Esssential Health Women’s Vitamins against a range of other vitamins from the likes of Blackmores, Nature’s Own, Swisse, Centrum and Microgenics to see whether the ingredients stack up.

The long and the short of it? They do indeed stack up. And then some!

Levels of the B vitamins are all well above the recommended daily allowance (RDI) with Aldi equalling or even beating out most of the other brands for B1, B5, Biotin (B8) and B9. Aldi’s B12 number is remarkably ten times higher than the other brands at 500μg compared to a maximum of 50μg for most other brands.

It stands head to head with the other brands for vitamin C and D3 and comes in ahead for E with 90mg compared to most of the others which average half that amount.

Importantly it contains vitamin K1 which helps calcium form bone – calcium on its own won’t do the trick. You won’t find K1 in many of the multivitamins from the big brands so this is a big plus.

Onto the minerals, and Aldi doesn’t disappoint here either. It includes solid amounts of chromium, copper, iodine, magnesium and iron.  Interestingly Aldi throw in some molybdenum which helps with toxicity and helps to process proteins and genetic material. We have not seen molybdenum in any other multi. Another unusual inclusion is silicon which helps with bone formation as well as hair and nails.

At 100mg, the calcium inclusion is more a nod to the pre-requisite for the mineral than sufficient on its own compared ti the 1300mg RDI.  In fairness, calcium is never anywhere near the RDI in any multivitamin and realistically you don’t want to be mixing too much calcium in with your magnesium anyway as they fight each other for absorption. Get your calcium in your food.

There are also some additional inclusions with lutein and pomegranate extract for inflammation, ashwagandha for stress, and the anti-oxidant lycopene. But before you get too excited, remember with a multivitamin there is only so much room in that little tablet and you’ll get way more lycopene from a good splash of ketchup or a cooked tomato.

Overall, the Aldi multivitamin is definitely amazing bang for your buck.