Smoke your vitamins?

In my mind, vitamins are those little Scooby Doo gummies that I would always try to sneak out of the kitchen.  They taste delicious while being quite nutritious.  It feels like just yesterday but it was over 10 years ago that I first started eating these vitamins.  As the world changes so do the simple things like how we take our vitamins.  The newest rage out there is the VitaCig.

The VitaCig is a smoke-free, nicotine-free, disposable vaporizer that contains flavored “vitamins”.  It comes in seven flavors that contain 500 puffs and then are disposable or recyclable.  The name is a little misleading because it doesn’t contain any of the things that you would normally associate with a cigarette.  The look of the device however, looks pretty identical to an E-cigarette or E-Hookah.

B1INBzXCYAA7WKt

The whole idea of this is so weird to me because smoking is associated with unhealthy living and vitamins is a healthy thing for your body.  So how do you mix the two?  The science behind the VitaCig is by Dr. Khary Bryan who developed each unique flavor of the VitaCig. “The VitaCig® device is designed to deliver the vapor of vitamins A,B,C,E, Coenzyme Q10, terpenes, and phytonutrients via direct inhalation. Phytonutrients and terpenes are compounds found in plants.” Says Dr. Khary.  Take for instance the Relax flavor.  It is a combination of Vitamin A, Vitamin B1, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, CoenzymeQ1o, and B-Myrcene.  In order to add the “relaxing” flavor to it they add blueberry and black currant extracts so that the vapor has a flavor.  Each flavor has its own unique combination of vitamin supplements and flavored vapor to go along with its name.

So how does this set itself apart from the unhealthy E-cigarette?  Dr. Khary explains that it is a water vapor that produces the smoke you see when you use it making it not harmful to your lungs.  You get the “cool” facor that goes along with smoking but with none of the unhealthy benefits.

I think this is a pretty cool design because you are combining two very opposite things.  As glamorous and fun the website tries to make these things look, there are obvious some doubts.  At the bottom of the page there are a few disclaimers written in tiny print that I’m sure VitaCig wishes you would ignore.  They read:

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

“E-Cigarettes have not been fully studied so consumers don’t know: – the potential risks of e-cigarettes when used as intended, – how much potentially harmful chemicals are being inhaled during use or – whether there are any benefits associated with using these products.”

This confirms my few doubts about this product and whether or not it can really replace the traditional vitamin.  In my eyes, this is like conning children into smoking E-cigarettes.  There is a huge market for this type of thing right now and inducing it with vitamins is only going to make people start smoking other things.  It’s pretty pathetic if you have to smoke in order to take your vitamins which is a very simple task.  Although the website does provide a “science” section I’m not sure I learned enough to believe that the vitamins I am inhaling are going to help me at all.

Upon looking for more information, I only found one article by Market Watch that reports further testing back in June by the VitaCig.  This is a fairly new company that clearly still needs to work on their product image and ideals in order to win me over as a customer.

 

http://www.vitacig.org/discover/

Leave a Reply