NOW Vitamin B-100 Review: Months of Daily Use

The bottle has sat in the upper cabinet to the left of my sink for eighteen months, and I still read the back of it every time I open a new one. That is not diligence. That is thirty-one years of library work, where you do not trust a thing you have not read twice with a pencil in your hand.

So here is what I found. I bought NOW Foods Vitamin B-100 with my own money, put one capsule in the AM side of my blue pill box every Sunday evening, and did not miss many mornings for a year and a half. I am sixty-three, I live alone in Dayton, Ohio, and I take four things at breakfast and one at dinner. I cannot tell you I feel a difference from any one bottle, and I would not trust anyone who says they can. What I can tell you is what the label says, what the capsule is like, what the bottle is like to live with, and whether the routine held when February came around.

How I've Used It

The order of things matters more than people think, so here it is. Breakfast is about eight in the morning, with food and a full glass of water. The multivitamin, the vitamin D3, the vitamin C and this B-100 all go down together. The magnesium waits until six at night, because the pharmacist at my grocery store suggested keeping it away from the multivitamin with iron, and I have never put the two together since.

The B-100 came into the cabinet eighteen months ago, which makes it the second newest of the five. I bought it after standing in the aisle reading labels for longer than I care to admit, and then I asked my doctor before I opened it. Read first, ask second, open third. That order is the whole of my method. She agreed that a capsule at breakfast was fine for me, and I have taken it that way ever since.

Every Sunday evening I sit at the kitchen table with the blue plastic seven day box, the AM lids and the PM lids, and I fill the week. One capsule goes into each AM compartment. The box is the reason this lasted. A bottle in a cabinet is a wish, and a capsule in a Monday lid is a habit. There are one hundred capsules in the bottle, and at one a day that is a bit over three months, so I buy it a little more than three times a year.

I keep one index card in the cabinet with everything I take written on it in pencil, and the B-100 is the fourth line. I took that card to my yearly physical and my doctor read all five lines and had nothing to say against any of them. That is not permission for you. It is just what happened at my appointment.

Reading the NOW Foods Label With a Pencil

Here is how I read a bottle, for whatever it is worth. Front first, because the front is what the maker wants you to see and it tells you what they think you are shopping for. Then the supplement facts panel, line by line, with the pencil moving. Then the other ingredients. Then the small print under the panel, where the asterisk gets explained, and which almost nobody reads standing in the aisle. The whole thing takes about three minutes. I have never regretted the three minutes.

The front of the NOW Foods bottle carries the brand name, the words Vitamin B-100, and the words energy production with an asterisk after them. That asterisk is the honest part. It means the statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and the line under it says the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. In plain English, that word on the front is the maker's wording and not a promise, and I do not read it as one. If you are shopping for something that will announce itself in how you feel by Thursday, this is not that, and no bottle is.

The back is more useful. The form is a capsule, one hundred of them to a bottle, and the capsule is vegetarian, which I like. The label says gluten free and vegan. It says unflavored, and I can tell you that is accurate, because there is nothing to taste but the capsule itself. The maker names what else is in there instead of hiding it under a word like blend: choline bitartrate, inositol, PABA, cellulose, magnesium stearate and silica. I wrote all of it on my index card, and I would rather see six named ingredients than one clever phrase.

The part I would have you slow down on is the amounts. They are high. Higher than the B amounts in my multivitamin, which is the one overlap I found with my pencil and took to my doctor. Her answer was that it was fine for her patient, meaning me, and that was a decision about me only. If you take any prescription, if you are pregnant or nursing, or if you have a condition your doctor is already managing, do not open this on your own. Bring the bottle to your doctor or to the pharmacist at your grocery store and let them read it. They read faster than we do and they read better.

What the Bottle Is Like in a Small Kitchen

I have a small kitchen, and the cabinet to the left of the sink holds five bottles with no room for a sixth. Everything lives behind a closed door, because my cat Dewey jumps on the counters. Dewey does not get vitamins. Nothing in that cabinet is for him, and the door stays shut, which is a rule I made the day I carried the first bottle home.

The NOW Foods bottle opens with a strong vitamin smell. Not a bad smell exactly, and not one I have gotten used to either. It is that sharp, dusty smell that tells you something is in there. If smells bother you, know that this one announces itself every time the lid comes off. The capsules are unflavored and there is nothing to taste, so the smell is the whole of it.

Five bottles in one cabinet is a tight arrangement, and I have opinions about which ones earn the shelf. The B-100 earns its place because the bottle is a sensible size for the shelf, it sits steady and does not tip, and I can find it by feel in the dark, which I have done at six in the morning more than once. If a bottle has to be moved to reach another bottle, it starts to feel like a chore, and chores are what break a routine. This one does not get moved.

I have never had a capsule stick to another capsule or clump at the bottom, which is more than I can say for a softgel that lived in this same cabinet one summer. The lid closes cleanly and the capsules do not rattle much. That is the entire physical report, and it is the sort of thing nobody puts on a listing.

The Sunday Pill Box Test

Here is the test I actually apply to any bottle, and it has nothing to do with what the front promises. Can I get it into the box on a Sunday evening without thinking, and can I get it out of the box on a Wednesday morning without a production? A capsule passes. A dropper does not. A chewable does not, not neatly. A powder with a scoop does not, and I have watched enough of them sit unused on a shelf to know.

That is why the bottle lasted. Eighteen months, a new one every three months or so, and no week where I stood at the cabinet deciding whether to bother. One capsule, one AM compartment, one line on the card. There is nothing to measure and nothing to count. When I open a new bottle I write the month on the index card and the record keeping is done.

You may wonder whether I would notice if I stopped. I do not know, and I am not going to find out by stopping, because my doctor and I settled on this list and I am not in the business of testing her work at my kitchen table. A pill box tells you whether you are taking something. It cannot tell you what the thing is doing, and neither can I. That is the honest version and you will not read it often.

One capsule, one line on the index card, one compartment in the box. That is the whole reason it survived eighteen months in my cabinet.

What I Compared It To, and What I Did Not Buy

The other bottle in this category is a methylated B-complex, and I want to be careful here, because I never owned one and never took one. I read about the difference between the forms. I read two labels side by side in the store and put both down. What decided it was not chemistry. It was the label. The B-100 had fewer lines to read and plainer wording, and a capsule count I could live with. The other bottle had a longer story on the back and I could not tell you now what half of it meant.

I also did not switch because of my doctor. She had seen this bottle on my index card along with the rest, and she had no reason for me to change anything. That is a small thing and it is the only reason I need. I will not tell you that one form works better in the body than another, because I cannot check that and neither can a bottle. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something, and more often than not it is the costlier bottle.

If you are weighing the two, my advice is dull. Read both labels with a pencil. Take both to your pharmacist and ask which one they would rather see on your card next year. Then buy the one that is already on a shelf at the store you shop in every week, because a bottle you have to order specially is a bottle that runs out on a Sunday and stays out until Thursday.

Who This Is For

This is for the person who has already decided they want a B-complex, has read enough to be confused by the whole shelf, and wants one bottle with a plain label and one capsule a day. If you keep a pill box, if your other bottles go down at breakfast, and if your doctor has seen your list, this fits into that life without any new machinery. It also helps if you like a short ingredient list and do not need a flavor.

And it is for the reader who does not mind being told to ask. I would rather you carried this page to your pharmacist than carried the bottle home on my say so. Everything above is about label, capsule, smell, shelf space and routine. None of it is about what the capsule does once you swallow it, because I cannot see that, and a review that claims otherwise is guessing.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you take a prescription and have not asked about interactions. Skip it if you are pregnant or nursing, or if you have a health condition your doctor is already treating. Skip it if you want a bottle that promises something on the front, because this one does not, and the asterisk is the most honest line of print on it.

Skip it too if a strong smell turns your stomach, or if you already have a B-complex your doctor put on your card and you are only shopping for a change. A change is not a reason. And skip it if you want something to chew, because this is a capsule with nothing to soften it and no flavor to hide behind.