Taking Vitamins Based on Race

April 12, 2006 — -- You can buy vitamins specific to your sex and to your age. But now GenSpec Labs, a company that researches health issues among different ethnic groups, sells vitamins that claim to address the needs of different races.

"There was a time when there was one vitamin, everybody took that. And then a few years ago, we had the gender, the male and the female [vitamin]," said Dexter Russell, vice president of GenSpec Labs. "Well this is just a natural evolution,"

According to GenSpec, one of the "targeted nutrient" pills contains more vitamin D for African-Americans and Hispanics because darker skin reduces the amount of vitamin D their bodies can take from the sun.

Nor do they get enough vitamin D from their diets, said Joseph "Joey" Lander, founder and president of GenSpec.

"The only areas where we find vitamin D in our food is cod liver and certain oily fish, and in fortified food like milk," Lander said. "But 75 percent of African-Americans and 65 percent of Hispanics are lactose intolerant."

The race-specific vitamins also contain more zinc, according to GenSpec, because blacks and Hispanics do not normally consume enough zinc in their diets.

Critics of these race-targeted vitamins say a traditional multivitamin would work just as well, and that there is no scientific evidence to support the company's claims.

"If you take an ordinary daily vitamin, do you get enough to make up for your skin tone?" said ABC medical news contributor Dr. David Katz. "Probably yes. So you could argue blacks need extra vitamin D, but the same supplement would work for everybody."

Katz said any general health differences among races is related more to factors other than genetics.

"There are minimal differences between races," Katz said. "We make a mistake thinking we're all that different from each other. The differences in our health are more related to lifestyle, education, finances and poverty than they are to genetics."

Dr. Kamau Kokayi, a general practitioner who prescribes vitamins at Olive Leaf Wholeness Center, a holistic health company in New York City, said vitamin deficiencies aren't genetic.

"You have to look at the diet," he said. "What are the actual stresses that people have in the population group you're examining?"

Kokayi called race-specific vitamins a "marketing gimmick."

"I think the amount of vitamin D being added or excluded -- really, the issue is more, is the person eating well," he said.

Lander said these vitamins are race specific for health purposes, not marketing purposes.

"There's so much science out there that agrees with the various deficiencies in the ethnic backgrounds," Lander said. "Is it a marketing gimmick that for every six Caucasians who die of prostrate cancer, there are 10 African-Americans? The American Cancer Society has said there's a direct link between vitamin D deficiency and prostrate cancer."

"Nobody gets offended that there's a senior version of vitamins, that there's a man- and woman-version of vitamins," he added. "But the minute you try to have a vitamin for the Hispanic and African-American population, people begin to question, is it a marketing gimmick? It certainly seems to border upon racism."