Throughout this year 7.30 has covered the health risks linked to consuming too much Vitamin B6, often added in large doses to multivitamins and supplements.
But as 7.30’s Tom Hartley reports, synthetic B6 is also being added to food and drinks.
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My inbox has been flooded with stories of people being poisoned by over-the-counter supplements containing vitamin B6. It’s something that we’ve been looking into for months. My quality of life has been damaged. Poor balance, brain fog, constant pain. Became so sick I thought I was going to die. It just goes on and on like this. There are dozens of them. And something that keeps popping up are claims that food and drinks are part of the problem with questions like why has B6 been added to so many products. [Music] Happy shopping. Yeah, it was very interesting. What did you find? Well, I was surprised to see it in so many everyday things that I wouldn’t have expected to see it in. But you know the biggest one of course is the energy drinks. Yes, that’s absolutely huge. Dr. Terry Lynn South is a GP and dietician. She says synthetic vitamin B6 has been added to countless Australian food products. These are just a few I found in a quick shop. Because most people who eat, you know, a nutritious uh healthy diet get all of the vitamin B6 that they need. So they don’t actually need supplements. They certainly don’t need uh energy drinks. Yeah. Why are they adding B6 to all this stuff? I feel as though, you know, that I think it comes from that era of, you know, B6 vitamins, you know, stress formula, give you energy, all of those sorts of things. I think it is smart marketing, but it’s not really something that we’ve seen, you know, deficiencies in in the community. While B6 is considered an essential vitamin, most people can get what they need from meats and veggies, and the recommended daily intake is less than 2 milligs for most adults. Our investigations have found debilitating health problems can occur when manufactured B6 is consumed even in small amounts and often in vitamin supplements particularly if you have you know a cumulative intake you know daily use weekly use um and has become a problem there’s really only one reason to have a supplement for B6 and that’s if there is proven deficiency or risk of deficiency so yeah I think people are inadvertently overdosing and now we’re starting to see the the consequences. It’s absolutely changed my life all because I thought I was taking something that was going to make me healthy and it didn’t. In 2020, musician Carrie McCannernney realized she had blood toxicity. For years, she’d been consuming daily weight loss supplements and shakes, not realizing they all contained synthetic B6. I started losing weight, but I also started losing muscle really quickly. And then it was sort of like into that six-month period or even less really that I started getting claudication, which is kind of like um muscle cramping in my my calves and my symptoms just kept getting worse and worse. I just became too sick and I wasn’t getting the help that I needed cuz I went to multiple doctors. No one was listening. She found support groups online which guided her recovery and has since become an advocate for other B6 victims. I’m seeing some of these women that are suicidal because of this chronic pain. It is that bad. These are major debilitating symptoms that destroy people’s lives. Back in bed, Manique’s blood became toxic after consuming protein shakes and multivitamins, not realizing the combined B6 levels were extreme. The worst state that I was in was bedbound for about 6 months. The vestibular migraine started and I lost my balance completely. Um, I’ve lost my independence. Uh, I can’t work. It’s a constant kind of pushpull of working out, you know, what my what my capabilities are now within my limitations basically. So, you’ve been really strict on your food intake since then. Yeah, definitely. Everything that I look at um I’m always that’s the first thing that I look for basics straight away. On the one hand, I was sort of surprised to see how many products have B6, but I also know that this kind of voluntary fortification of products with vitamins and minerals is a key marketing tool that’s used by the food industry. Alexandra Jones is an expert on Australian food policy. So supplements are regulated by the TGA. Food is regulated by FSAN, Food Standards Australia, New Zealand. Their job is to set the standards for how food is made, marketed and sold in Australia. The primary goal of their role is to protect public health. So we have these two regulatory bodies. They do overlap, but they do regulate different substances. Last month, the TGA released a report on B6 focused on the complimentary medicine sector. It said the benefits were negligible, labelings inconsistent and confusing, and recommended products with more than 50 milligs be moved behind pharmacy counters. It also called on Australia’s Food Standards Agency to reconsider the amount of B6 allowed in energy drinks. [Music] There’s no good reason why energy drinks need to have six times the recommended daily intake of B6 in them. Yeah. With this one, it’s got the Dr. South points out even though all these foods are compliant, there are discrepancies between the TGA and food standards regulations, including labeling specific to B6. What’s interesting is if you take a multivitamin and mineral and it’s got more than 10 millig of B6, it has to come with a warning label. These energy drinks are not coming with a warning label. I do think we need better regulations in these higher food products. Our consumption of them is growing. So if new health risks are emerging, it would be reasonable to ask for XANS to review that standard. The energy drink sector didn’t answer our questions, instead pointing us towards the complimentary medicine sector, saying some popular multivitamin supplements contain about 25 mg of B6, at least five times the average B6 in energy drinks. Brands including Kelloggs, Baraca, and Nestle told 730 that they are compliant with current guidelines with their products containing much less than 50 milligrams of B6, which is the current upper limit. Food Standards Australia said it would consider reviewing the current permissions if evidence emerges that consumers are regularly exceeding safe intake levels. And the people affected by B6 just want someone to take accountability. I don’t think it should be in anything. There does definitely need to be massive warnings on products that have it in it. There needs to be like hoops for people to jump through to get it.
