Buy the best: when it comes to vitamins, quality beats quantity.

Let's face it: You dish out good money for your multivitamins because you want the health benefits of specific, active nutrients--vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, herbal extracts. But what about the inactive ingredients listed on the label?

Even the highest-quality vitamin pills contain inactive components. After all, vitamins don't grow on trees. Well, actually they do: They're called fruits. But when you eliminate the fiber, antioxidants and water, you're left with powdered chemicals that can be pressed into tablets or poured into capsules.

Without certain "non-nutritive" ingredients--or excipients--these tablets could crumble to powder instead of staying in pill form. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the world of vitamin additives.

chemistry set

Some additives allow a timed release; others make pills smoother so they don't stick to your throat. Binders--with names such as polyethylene glycol--hold the tablet together. Fatty acids or stearates are added as lubricants to assist manufacturing. If you see sodium lauryl sulfate on the label, don't panic; such disintegrators ensure the pill dissolves in the body. Some supplements contain minute amounts of ground sand--or silica--to keep moisture from causing clumping inside the capsule. And chlorophyll, fructose or other flavoring agents disguise what would otherwise be, well, a bitter pill to swallow.

You may also see benzoic acid listed on your supplement label. That might sound scary, but it's actually just rosemary extract used as an antioxidant and preservative. Titanium dioxide? It's a whitening agent. As for talc, don't worry. It's not the impure stuff you find in face powder. It's hydrous magnesium silicate, used for dusting tablet molds. It's even a source of dietary magnesium and silicon.

The need for coloring is questionable. But consumers don't like it when their vitamins vary in color from one pill to the next--or when they're a sickly gray.