Dr. Genevieve Newton and Dr. Abby Kramer introduce the newest addition to the Fringe lineup: the Kids Mighty Multivitamin. This episode is equal parts product deep-dive and nutritional science lesson, covering why kids today face real and measurable nutrient gaps — even those eating well-rounded diets. Soil depletion, food processing, and the reality of picky eaters all contribute to a landscape where supplementation isn't optional, it's essential.
The Fringe kids' multi is built from organic fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms — a food-based foundation that prioritizes bioavailability and safety. Dr. Gen and Dr. Abby walk through the standout ingredients: choline for brain development, algae-based calcium, extra magnesium, and a plant-sourced D2/K1 combination. They also address one of the trickier challenges in food-based supplementation — Proposition 65 heavy metal disclosures — and explain why naturally occurring trace metals in whole-food ingredients are fundamentally different from contamination.
From the thaumatin-based raspberry-strawberry flavor (developed with picky eaters in mind) to the $48 price point and dosing by age, this conversation gives parents a clear picture of what to look for in a children's supplement and why most options on the market fall short.
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Transcript
Genevieve: Hi everyone, welcome back to the Fringe Podcast. I am here with Dr. Abby Kramer, who is the medical director at Fringe. And I'm Dr. Genevieve Newton. I am the scientific director. And we are really excited to talk to you today because we have a new product that's launching. It is a food-based kids multivitamin that we've called the Fringe Kids Mighty Multivitamin. And there's a lot of really unique and amazing characteristics. that Abby's going to tell us about today. So let's just dive right in, Abby. First of all, why? There are so many multivitamins on the market. Why did you feel so passionately about developing a kid's multivitamin?
Abby: Yeah, this is really... A very similar story to other products we've made is even though there are so many multivitamins out there, especially for children, there's almost too many. If you're, you know, researching or looking on the shelves at the grocery store or the pharmacy, it's like, where do I begin? And there also wasn't one I could point to that I absolutely loved. There wasn't one where I felt like I wasn't compromising something where maybe I'd seen it really work or it tastes really great. So kids will actually take it, but I don't love these two or three ingredients in it, right? So I feel like it's a very similar story to our electrolytes that I know it's needed and we're going to talk about why. And there wasn't one I really loved that I really trusted that, you know, from the ground up, I could like stand behind 100 % of it.
Genevieve: Yeah, no, I agree. My kids are past the point of taking a kid's multivitamin, but I remember at the time it was. It was challenging to find one that really wasn't just a candy that they would eat. Yeah, definitely. do you think, you know, when you look at the science of the nutrient intakes and dietary deficiencies, are these nutrient deficiencies really widespread in kids today? And what about the ones who eat well? I mean, I have picky eaters, so my kids never fell into that category, but there are definitely some that do. So do you think that that multi
Abby: You know, I really do think it's necessary. And if you would have asked me this 10 years ago, I would have said it's not necessary. kids focus on real food, if kids eat clean, if they're not eating the typical kid diet, you know, it's like hilarious. You go to restaurants and the kids menu is like chicken nuggets and macaroni. Like they can't eat, you know, chicken. Come on. It's like such a systemic issue. Um, but I would have said there's no need for a multivitamin.
Genevieve: Yeah. Yeah.
Abby: it's synthetic anyway, you should be getting your nutrients from food, focus on that. You're overshooting a lot of stuff you don't need. It's in a lot of forms that you don't absorb well anyway, and it's got a bunch of other garbage ingredients in there that you don't need every single day. But however, the last few years, I've really changed my tune because We've really learned how intensely depleted our food is. So that even if you are eating a really good organic whole food base, you're going to the farmers market.
Abby: and getting local produce and doing all those things, which we all should absolutely do, we still tend to fall short in a lot of nutrients because of that fact, right? And then let alone, like you're saying, if your kid's a picky eater and goes through a phase where they don't want to touch animal protein, right? So they're losing a lot of their B vitamins or something like that. So I really do believe now that a multivitamin for kids and adults really is becoming more and more essential.
Genevieve: Yeah, I've come to the same conclusions. And I think what most of our listeners and really, you know, even very few people who are really well educated in nutrition are aware of is that if you look at the studies that compare the nutrient content of foods today, the micronutrient contents are our vitamins, our minerals. If you look at them compared to 50 years ago, 100 years ago, the nutrient content for some nutrients, not all of them, but several of them has fallen. dramatically. And so even when you're eating healthy food that should in theory contain adequate amounts of nutrients, they don't. And so this confounds the use of things like you know chronometer and these nutrition measuring tools that people are using that you you put in your food across the day and it spits out the numbers that you consumed. Those numbers came from many many many analyses done many years ago. If we were to do those analyses today we
Genevieve: would see very different things, particularly for things like magnesium. Vitamin C content of food has changed dramatically, so it's definitely an issue. So this is really, I mean I guess you're in your eyes then you would describe this as another one of our essential supplements, is that correct?
Abby: Yeah, for sure. Because like, you know, we've discussed in previous episodes, guys go back and listen to that. But, you know, Essential to us means that in our modern world. we cannot get enough of X, Y, or Z through our lifestyle, through our diets, so this type of supplementation has become essential. It really should be in everyone's kind of daily stack. And then you're personalizing from there based on your needs, but it's just so hard for us to get these basic nutrients from food only.
Genevieve: Yeah, and I think you would agree with me that it's absolutely tragic that we've gotten to this place because when I went through my nutrition education and absolutely, you know, the point that was always being made is you need to get nutrients from food. It's only really supposed to be a handful of people that when I was educated were taught that, okay, you need to fill gaps with some individuals, but for the average person, if you're going to eat a healthy diet, you should be okay. And that's just not.
Genevieve: the case anymore and it is it's it's very very tragic. So tell us about the kids multivitamin. What what is it?
Abby: So our approach with the kids' multivitamin has been, and you know what, I'm glad we waited to make this until now, until our values were really set, because we've landed on, we've really, as you guys know, sourced our things, make our things as close to from the earth and from food as possible. So we decided to go very different than the vast majority of multivitamins out there on the market and source almost all of the nutrients from food. So it's a powder-based supplement. It's not a gummy. It's not a tablet. You can mix it in water, your beverage of choice. You could even mix it in applesauce or yogurt, something like that. And the foundation of the nutrients come from organically grown fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms, which is very, very unique in the market. But to us, it's like, that's where we should, in a perfect world, like we just said, we're getting all of this stuff from our diet. So this is the forms of those nutrients. that's how our bodies should be consuming them. And the shocking thing to me and you, I know, as we, you know, dug started doing this, what, a couple years ago now? Was that how many multivitamins out there are all synthetic?
Genevieve: All synthetic. Yeah, almost all synthetic. there are, yeah, it was very wild. We had the option though of we could just buy this fruit and vegetable blend and, that was something that we could have done and we could have used that as our product. A lot of people do that. A lot of companies do that, but we didn't. We chose to formulate it primarily using this fruit, vegetable, mushroom blend.
Abby: It's pretty wild.
Genevieve: But then we did some stuff to it. Can you tell us about that?
Abby: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, we added a couple other things that we felt like was very important. So I'm really big on choline. We could probably do a whole podcast episode on choline and how important it is. And I mean, we tried to source it from food, but that would be like egg yolk. or liver, it would taste terrible, just trust us on that. So you're welcome. That's the one synthetic add-on nutrient, but choline is so important for brain health, primarily. Really important, you'll see in a lot of high quality prenatal vitamins, for example, people are starting to realize a lot of choline should be in there. And so many people are nutrient deficient because it's in like organ meats and eggs.
Genevieve: Yeah, know it's really, the choline is one of those nutrients where when you look at the deficiency statistics, it's very significant for many different age groups. I know personally that's one of the supplements that I use specifically as a choline supplement because of concern with respect to brain health and recognizing that I am not getting enough in my diet. Almost nobody is. And so as you say, we made the decision to add choline and when we looked at sourcing it, we couldn't find a food-based source of choline that was readily available. we made based on our values, which are to put as a priority using ingredients that come directly from nature at the top, but yet weighing that and balancing it out with the need to like the recognition that this supplement needed to contain choline and the only way that we could do it was to use this one single synthetic ingredient. So we did that. What else can tell people about the other things that we decided to add a little bit more of to our multivitamin?
Abby: Yep. So we added a bit more calcium. from algae, calcium obviously is probably the most important at any stage of life, you know, for kids, for bone health, bone development, a lot of kids for various reasons cannot have dairy, which is one of the biggest dietary sources of calcium. I see a lot of kids that need to be dairy free for whatever reason. And so then your option is like green leafy vegetables, which we all know how often kids really want to consume that all of the time. So calcium, but algae-based, not, you know, synthetic. And then the other one was some additional magnesium because, like we talked about, magnesium is so depleted in our soils and it's also really, really important for hundreds and hundreds of processes in the body. So we wanted to beef that up a bit as well.
Genevieve: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And so we looked really carefully at what the intake and deficiency data said, what we could get from the fruit and vegetable and mushroom. food blend and then looked at, okay, we need to add a little bit more for our magnesium and then for the calcium and for the choline. So, okay, we talk about synthetic vitamins and obviously it's a really big value of ours that we avoid those if we can. Can you talk a little bit about why you feel so passionately about that using food, natural ingredients as much as possible?
Abby: I mean, I think it just mostly goes down to like biologically. That's how we're supposed to get our nutrients from a food based diet. Right. It's like, wow, how did humans survive for, you know, hundreds and thousands of years without their Flintstone vitamins. Right. Like we got that stuff from food. Like that's naturally how it's supposed to be. And I'm not saying there's not a time or a place for synthetic supplementation. Right. We have kind of talked about this on other podcasts a bit. If you've got a severe deficiency, you
Genevieve: Damn.
Abby: might need to go that route for a bit to get your levels up, right? But especially for children, you know, why not go food based when we can, but I think a lot of people don't because it's a lot harder and it's a lot more expensive. So it's not as easy.
Genevieve: Yeah, no, absolutely. No, no, and we've we've certainly run into that is I mean, we could have made it. We could have made even this just off the shelf picking something, right? And that would be much, much easier. And you can certainly understand the temptation to companies, but it's so worth it. And we're both moms, right? We wanna make that. Well, we're not, and it's not just you and I, there's everybody at Fringe, almost everybody has kids, and it's really important to us to get good quality products into the market. So, okay.
Genevieve: When we look at the ingredient list, we see vitamin D2 instead of vitamin D3 and vitamin K1 instead of vitamin K2. Can you talk about that? Why did we have those instead of D3 and K2, which we have in our vitamin D supplement?
Abby: Correct. It's because that is the form of those vitamins that is in the fruit-veggie-mushroom blend. So when you consume those vitamins from those plant foods, they're in that form. Right? so that is, you know, unless we added a separate form of that on top of it, that's how you would get those vitamins from those plant foods. And then if people want to add additional, you know, D3K2, like that's why we have that as an extra supplement. So we just wanted to kind of hit that really nice food-based baseline. And then you can always add additional on top of that if you need.
Genevieve: Yeah, and most people, as we talked about in our last podcast, most people will need to add additional vitamin D. because it's important to consume vitamin D alongside vitamin K to make sure that any absorbed calcium gets to the bones and the teeth, you want to make sure that you're taking those two together. certainly there's a great synergy between the kids multivitamin and our vitamin D 3K2 supplement. There's no question about that. Yeah.
Abby: Yes, and really all of them, right? Even magnesium. Some kids certainly might benefit for more. But that's where we didn't want the multi to have too much D for some kids, right? Or too much magnesium. And that's especially with vitamin D, that's such like a custom need dependent on the person and their biology. So then you can add or not as needed based on what your kid needs.
Genevieve: Yeah, well you bring up a really good point there because when people look at our supplement facts table, they're going to see that there's what's called a percent DV, which is a percent daily value. So that is if you're taking this as a supplement as directed, what percentage of the recommended nutrients will it be giving you? And you'll see that for almost all of them, we don't have 100 % of the daily values. Some of them are, you know, they're kind of more coming in at around 50%.
Genevieve: Can you explain why we chose not to double it up and hit a hundred on everything?
Abby: Yep. And this is, feel like, a big difference and a good thing to specify because people might look at that and be like, am I getting less for my money from, you know, a lot of these synthetic-based multivitamins, for example, overshoot everything, right? You'll see like B12 is 10,000 % of your daily value. And I just don't think that's necessary. Frankly, you're just peeing out most of that.
Abby: But for us, we didn't want to completely fill everything. We wanted to leave room for that with a whole food, healthy, nutrient-dense diet, right? So you don't need to overshoot everything so much when you are also... eating these types of foods, protein, fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, right? So I feel like the multivitamin world especially has got swung so far into we're just really overshooting everything and people are just taking a lot more than they actually need.
Genevieve: Absolutely, and we really just are, I think if you had to describe our value, I'd... main values at Fringe would be to go live the way nature intended, right? And so nature did not intend for us to consume 500 % of the daily value of nutrients in a single sitting. And so by giving people the option to have having a powder, it's easy if you feel like, you if you feel like your kid has had, you've been on vacation and they've eaten terribly for a week, well, you can bump that scoop up a little bit, right? That's a very easy thing to So parents have a lot of flexibility there and they can definitely be assured that there's no risk of toxicity with the product. One of the things that, you know, we haven't really talked too much about this when we talk about these synthetically made nutrients that come usually from China. It's really important when you're buying those products, we've certainly specified that from some people, some of the time, there's really a time and a place where you may need to take something that is synthetically sourced, but make sure that the company that you're buying it from does extensive third-party testing on the ingredients because heavy metal contamination from other countries isn't, is not an uncommon thing to see.
Genevieve: also see contamination from things like residual solvents and pesticides and a lot of things that you don't want to have in that. So can you talk a little bit about how we test for our safety of our products at Fringe?
Abby: Yes. do we test? So, yes, first of all, like while we're formulating stuff, we test ingredients because so for example, with this, this product is a great example, right before we even moved forward. We sent the fruit, veggie, mushroom blend out for testing to make sure it's super clean before we go through the work of flavoring it and swining it. We want to make sure this is a really clean source product. And so what we do is we test at different points throughout the production process. We always know where our stuff comes from, what testing the vendor, the company themselves might be doing. So we get our eyes on that, make up a sample, send that out. We test every single batch before and after for heavy metals, pesticides, and mold. And we test for everything you can possibly test for. You can save a lot of money and just test for a couple of pesticides instead of all of them. We test for all of them. And so we do that before. our factory gets all the ingredients, mixes together a sample, they send it out for third party testing. So we wait a couple weeks for that. It comes back, we come over it, do a lot of math, approve it, then it goes through production, then we hold it and do the same thing again. And so we know before it's super clean and after that nothing weird happened. And then we sell it and we do that on every single batch. A lot of people don't do that, unfortunately, like a couple
Abby: If you're lucky enough that they would even send you their test results, sometimes you get them and they're like three years old. So that's not even on what you currently are ingesting. And so it's important to us to do that on every single batch. Every time we publish the testing results right on our website so you guys can have access to that. It's important for everything, but especially for kids' products that that's happening and you have access to that information. Because the truth is you just really don't know unless you do.
Genevieve: No, you have no idea. You've worked with supplement companies and some really good quality supplement companies. What percentage, I mean, I this is a ballpark, but what percentage would you say are doing extensive safety testing like we are?
Abby: I don't even know because they don't even, it's not on their website, right? So I mean, what you would have to do is probably contact the company, the customer service, ask for the testing results. A lot of the really, really big companies do their testing in-house, which I personally don't like. I don't know why you wouldn't send it out for third party.
Genevieve: Maybe not. No.
Abby: and I think a lot of them just probably do it every few years. Like how up-to-date and current is it? And most of them won't share the COAs, if you ask. So it's really kind of scary, honestly.
Genevieve: Yeah, and I think this speaks to, we're seeing a shift in customer education base, obviously, and the more people know about what's going on in the background of the things that they're buying and consuming.
Genevieve: the more they need to step up and ask for this information from people because that's the only way it's going to change. Because it should be a standard across the industry because a company that cares about the product that they're making will do this, right? And will stand behind it. So...
Abby: Yep. I agree.
Abby: Yep. Yep. And some of them will. I've reached out to some and they're like, yeah, we'll gladly send it. And it's totally fine. So I would encourage people if they're thinking like, man, I really want to know what's in, you know, this product or how clean or not clean it is. Just reach out to the company and see what they say. And it'll kind of show you their true colors.
Genevieve: Yeah, absolutely. Do you, what is the situation with heavy metals when you're looking at a product like this that is food based? So what most people don't understand is that heavy metals are elements that are found in the earth. So it's actually a very normal thing for them to be present to some extent in things like fruits and vegetables. So how does that play into our products?
Abby: Yes, so how that plays into any time you are consuming a food based product or mineral rich product, salt falls into this category, right? You guys might've seen on social media, people leave like putting salt companies on blast because they have, you know, metals in their salt. It's like, well, they come from the ground. So that's going to happen. So it's important to know like dose matters.
Abby: And this stuff is cumulative, right? So you want to just make sure the levels are at the lower end, but you usually are going to have these metals in food-based products. If you went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of fruits, veggies, and mushrooms and sent them out to a lab to have tested, there would be some of those heavy metals present in those foods because it's in the soil. You know, the food grows there.
Genevieve: It's in the rocks. It's in the water.
Abby: Correct, like leaches that and then it's in your final product. Now, certainly, there can be problems with contamination if something is not organically grown or whatever that might be. You know, There's been scary things coming out about like poor quality protein powders being super high in lead, right? So you want to look out for that stuff. But it's important for people to understand people think metal and freak out. And a lot of that is like fear based clickbait on the internet for people that don't understand. that stuff is natural, it is in the earth, it is in our foods. Like the dinner you ate last night in your salad could have had more metals than the multivitamin your kid is consuming, right? So that's an important delineation to make because we also will have like a Prop 65 warning label on this product, not even because we violate it, but just because that's for that reason with the metal levels can show up in things like chocolate, fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, because they come from the earth.
Genevieve: So where does that range come from that we use to say, okay, this is acceptable versus this isn't? What's the basis of that?
Abby: There's several different ranges out there you can look at and go by. Probably the cleanest one is something called the Clean Label Project. So they're even stricter than Prop 65. Prop 65 is really incredibly strict. So that is like a standard to go by. However, I kind of feel like the Prop 65 stuff really unfairly targets the supplement world, specifically like food-based supplement world. right? So some products will violate it and it's like your sweet potato at the grocery store has more metals than this product does, right? So I mean, if you're below Prop 65, you're very clean. A lot of products have to put that label on and I would still feel comfortable personally ingesting them or giving them to my kid. And so there's a few different organizations that have their standards for heavy metals. They're all a little different, but Prop 65
Genevieve: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Abby: super strict clean label project even more strict.
Genevieve: Yeah, so I think what people need to understand is that certainly you could go and buy a fully synthetic multivitamin and it would have potentially no, as long as it wasn't contaminated somewhere, it would have no heavy metals in it. But if it is something that's food-based, even if it's derived from an organic blend of fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms like ours is, because of the fact that it comes from the earth where these metals originate, there will be low levels, but we ensure that the levels are low enough that they're consistent with the accepted standards. I guess, and rigorous standards.
Abby: Yep. Yep. Yep.
Genevieve: of different industries. Yeah. Yes. Yes, they have different standards. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So how did you decide to flavor this thing? Like, what does it taste like and where do the sweeteners come from? it tasty?
Abby: Correct. And for children, right? That's a very different story than adults.
Abby: It's very tasty, it's berry flavored, it really worked to our favor that we had done the electrolyte before this product. because we basically took that flavor profile and shifted it over to the kids' multi. The difference is that this one is raspberry and strawberry, so it's kind of like a mixed berry flavor. And then we used the same sweetener as we do with our electrolyte, which is thalmatin, which is from fruit, kind of similar to monk fruit. And yeah, that part was actually knock on wood easier than previously because we already kind of knew the raspberry tasted really good and we could bump up the sweetness with some more strawberry. And so that luckily, you know, we were already 50 % of the way there.
Genevieve: Yeah, Noah, I've had it. I think it tastes great. What sort of feedback have you had from kids who've tried it?
Abby: So we've had many kids sample it. gave it to, I see like well over 50 % of my patient bases, pediatrics and clinics. So I gave it to a handful of patient families to try. My daughter's been taste testing it this whole time. I know Alison gave it to a handful of kids and it was like 90 % of the kids loved it. know, there's always gonna be a kid that like doesn't like berries or whatever, but it's really versatile. think. how I will probably use this with my daughters most mornings. She has a smoothie protein shake. It pairs super well in a shake or smoothie. It's really good straight up on its own in water though to be honest. Tastes similar to our electrolytes. I need to try it. I want to try it in plain yogurt because I feel like that actually probably will be pretty good. Make it like a berry flavored yogurt. I think an applesauce would be great and a juice it would be great. So it's super versatile.
Genevieve: It is. Yeah.
Genevieve: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree. And I've been enjoying it, but would you recommend that adults can take it as well as an option?
Abby: Absolutely. It's a superfood multivitamin, right? So there's no reason that adults couldn't put even one scoop would give you a nice boost, but a couple scoops in your smoothie. You know, it's that's the beautiful thing about it being food based is your body's gonna utilize those nutrients. Like you just ate some fruits, vegetables and mushrooms. So if you're on the go, you need a lunch, a quick breakfast. That's a super easy add on.
Genevieve: Yeah, no, I agree. Okay, so I'm so excited about this. can we expect to see it hit the market?
Abby: Me too.
Abby: So this will be live on our website mid-March, I'm assuming when this podcast goes out, it'll be live. And that'll be available for pre-order. We'll be just on the tail end of finishing up the testing, all that stuff we talked about, waiting for that to come back. And then it should be shipping in April to people.
Genevieve: Okay, and what's the approximate price point going to be?
Abby: It's going to be a very, the plan is the same price point as our current products. So 48 bucks. And then if you put it on subscription, like our other products, it even goes down from there.
Genevieve: Amazing, amazing. And so, do you have any any additional thoughts or points that you wanted to share about the product that I haven't asked you about?
Abby: I think the main parting words with this is that if you have not tried a high quality kids multivitamin with your children yet, I would highly encourage people to give it a try for 30 days and see the difference you notice in your kids because you know, a multivitamin doesn't sound very sexy or like it's going to fix anything. But I'm telling you when you get kids nutrients up, like we've talked about on our other podcasts, right? When you get your minerals up, your hydration up, like the foundational stuff. I've seen stuff, and this is on like more synthetic multivitamins, right? This is going to be even better, but I've seen kids with attention issues improve, sleep improve, energy improve, digestion improve, brain fog, like, so behavior is huge. The body... is going to exhibit symptoms when it's lacking core foundational nutrients for every process in your body to run, right? So this is another one of those foundational things, no matter what your child might be struggling with with their health or not, this is definitely something to give it a try and report back.
Genevieve: Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's really exciting and looking forward to what happens over the next few months with this. So thank you for talking today about our new Kids Mighty Multivitamin. And thanks everybody for joining us. And we will see you next time on the Fringe Podcast.
