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Despite my healthy vegan diet I still like to boost some of the most important nutrients to optimise my health, so I look out for products that will support me in doing that. As a result, I have found Vitl to be a reliable brand that offers personalised supplements which largely fulfil my nutritional requirements, along with helpful advice too. Their advice and suggestions are very positive and generally very appropriate too, although I tend to use it as ‘guidance’ rather than ‘gospel’.
In this Vitl review, we look at their supplements and why they fit the bill, and also briefly evaluate the additional services they offer, including DNA & blood tests, and a recycling scheme for the blister packs.
Editor’s rating: 4.6 / 5
Pros
- Personalised
- Add-on products & services
- Clean ingredients
Cons
- Cost
- No edit function
Use discount code VEGANMUM30 for 30% off Personalised vitamins for 3 months of subscription
This Vitl review is sponsored by the brand but – as always – reflects my honest, personal opinion.
Who are Vitl?
Vitl is a UK-based company operating in the ‘wellbeing’ arena. It is a brand that sells dietary supplements – some personalised – together with optional DNA and blood test services which support further tailoring of the nutritional supplements on offer. It is not clear where the supplements are manufactured, but as and when I receive clarification on that I will update this review accordingly.
They have an ‘excellent’ score on Trustpilot with largely positive reviews about both products and service; they also seem to respond quickly to negative feedback.
The positives
This brand offers good quality, personalised supplements based on information you give them, along with add-on services like blood and DNA tests which might give you further guidance on your nutritional requirements. Let’s take a look at each of those in turn.
Personalised
We all love a quiz, particularly when it’s all about us! And Vitl’s online quiz also has a purpose because it asks lots of questions about your diet, your lifestyle, and what your objectives are for taking supplements. Its clever software then goes away and determines which combination of nutrients would benefit you most.
A few days later, you receive one of these yellow boxes (inside a more anonymous plain brown box!) containing a range of capsules in blister pack strips. On the back of each detachable strip is the day of the week on which they should be taken – very useful for absent-minded people like me!
This sunshine yellow box also contains a card detailing the combination of capsules you’ve been sent, the ingredients contained in each, and its purpose.
Add-on products and services
To add to the tailored nature of these vegan supplements, Vitl also offers a saliva-based DNA nutrition test, and a vitamin and cholesterol blood test, both at additional cost (I haven’t used these personally). They will send you what you need to collect the samples in your own home which you then return to them for analysis, using laboratories sanctioned by the UK’s government appointed accreditation service, UKAS.
- Vitamin & cholesterol blood test – this is quite reasonably priced, and gives you some useful information about your vitamin and cholesterol levels. It is also likely that you will get the results, and personalised advice subsequently, more quickly than you would on the NHS! Handy to know if you’re deficient in any key vitamins too because you’ll have a better understanding of what you might need to supplement (or eat more of!)
- DNA test – Vitl advises that testing your DNA (not for ancestry or paternity purposes!) enables them to offer more bespoke advice about your nutritional needs because the results can indicate how effectively your body might process and absorb certain nutrients. It’s fair to say that my very amateur online research suggests that the science behind this is not fully proven, but Vitl are careful not to make false promises. They are checking for your personal potential predispositions, presumably (sorry, lots of ‘p’s there!) based on comparisons with the vast libraries of other people’s data that available out there in the online world. And there is currently a huge amount of scientific research going into the possibility of medicines being tailored to individuals, so there could well be something in it!
Clean ingredients
Vitl state that they take into account all dietary requirements when making their personalised recommendations, so if appropriate, ingredients will be vegan, and gluten, nut & soy free. Importantly though, regardless of your personal dietary requirements, Vitl confirm that none of their supplements contain harmful fillers, bulking agents, additives, artificial colours, or genetically-modified ingredients. Whilst they are not completely alone in this, it is always worth checking for these less desirable ingredients when looking at other supplement brands.
The negatives
It’s a rare review where I don’t have a moan about cost! And although I love the concept of these personalised supplements, I would also love to see an opportunity to edit the final product.
Cost
I suppose if you compare the cost of Vitl’s personalised supplements to similar brands, it’s actually competitively priced because you’re getting pretty much everything you need in one hit. It just feels like a bit of an outlay every month and let’s face it, we would all like things to be cheaper, right?
There are some alternative options that Vitl offer though. If you want to stick with the tailored supplements, they do offer a stripped down version for less money called Essential One which quite simply pares down the number of ingredients to the key nutrients. Or if you’re happy to go with a more standardised offering, there is a wide range of supplements available in Vitl’s online store.
You can also take advantage of Vegan Mum’s exclusive discount code: VEGANMUM30. This will give you 30% off the first 3 months of a personalised supplements subscription which brings the cost down quite significantly.
No edit function
The recommendations that came out of the quiz I took on the website broadly matched what I thought I would need given my diet and lifestyle. However, there were a couple of extra nutrients that I would have liked to see and that I supplement separately as a result e.g. omega 3. That said, I can appreciate that the customer meddling in the process by putting things in and taking stuff out could play havoc with the algorithms, and the cost! So, I get why they don’t have that option, but it would be a ‘nice to have’…
Vegan Mum’s Conclusion of this Vitl Review
As a vegan who takes her diet pretty seriously, I believe I eat very healthily. But I also know that supplementing my nutrition in certain areas to ‘plug gaps’ is a good idea, so I’m always on the lookout for good quality products that will support my health and wellbeing. However, I don’t want to take a multivitamin all the time if there are elements I just don’t need (although there are occasions when I find them useful).
Consequently, I’m quite a big fan of personalised supplements and I really like Vitl’s quiz and tailoring process, it seems like a smarter way to identify what I might need. However, I think it’s still useful to have a bit of an understanding of your own nutritional requirements because although the algorithm is clever, it will work within certain parameters and you may not end up with everything you need. As a vegan, I know that it is probably sensible to supplement with an algal oil based omega 3, but that didn’t appear in my suggested personalised pack – there are only so many things it can include I guess!
But everything else does seem very relevant to me, and the nutrients included in my pack are all ones that I might benefit from. I have been taking them for a couple of weeks now, and am supplementing my omega 3 separately. It’s at this point where I’m thinking that the blood test might be useful to confirm more precisely which vitamins I need, then take the supplements, then take a further blood test in 3 months or so to see what effect they’ve had – something I’m thinking about (although I already know my cholesterol levels unfortunately – read my guide about vegans and cholesterol for more information on that).
I’m not sure how accurately the DNA test can reflect your nutritional requirements, but I’m no expert as you may have noticed! I guess it has the potential to unlock more information about how your body might process food and nutrients so if you want to go that deep, it may be something you’d want to go for.
I always make a point of reading Trustpilot comments as part of my research when I review a product, and I couldn’t help noticing that there was the odd moan about the smell of some of the capsules, so I thought I would address that here. It’s not something that I have really noticed; they do smell quite ‘natural’, but I see that as a good thing and it hopefully reflects the fact that Vitl doesn’t use unwanted additives to make them more palatable. I didn’t find any other negative comments about the products other than that.
Initially though, I was surprised that no-one had mentioned the packaging because I’d been disappointed that Vitl were using blister packs for these personalised supplements. However, I quickly discovered that they offer a free, easy to use recycling service for them which is a great idea. Consequently, I didn’t really see it as a negative.
So overall, I think the process behind Vitl’s process is clever and it’s certainly reflecting what science is gearing up to do in the future, tailoring medicines and treatments to suit individual requirements. I liked the product and the service, and rather than taking standard multivitamin tablets, Vitl’s personalised supplements honestly feel like a very sensible option to me.
Use exclusive 30% Vitl Discount code VEGANMUM30 at checkout
FAQs
What are personalised vitamin supplements
In essence, a combination of nutrients that are put together to address your specific nutritional needs. In practice, when buying from a brand it is likely that you will take an online quiz, providing details about your lifestyle, diet, and health objectives, and their background algorithms will then suggest a combination of their products best suited to your needs. Whilst this is very helpful, it is important to be aware of the shortcomings of this process because without a blood test to measure your current nutrient levels, the calculations will have to make certain assumptions about you. Consequently, you might end up taking something that you don’t need. A blood test should, in theory, ensure a more effective personalised product (if the brand supports that level of tailoring).
Research References
I enjoyed carrying out my research for this Vitl review, and hope you have found it useful. Please find just a few of my research references below for more reading if you’re interested:
- BBC Food – Could a DNA test transform your diet?
- Healthline – how your genes help you lose weight
- National library of medicine – consumer genetic testing kits
I hope you’ve enjoyed this Vitl review. If you are interested in finding out about other ‘personalised’ products, why not take a look at our Diem Scents review?
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