One-A-Day Women's

Experts recommend that premenopausal women look for a few key nutrients in their multivitamin, namely 18 mg of iron and at least 400 mcg of folic acid. Women lose iron each month when they menstruate, and folic acid is recommended for all women of childbearing age to prevent potential neural tube defects in babies. One-A-Day Women's contains the recommended amounts of iron and folic acid, in addition to 1,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D, 500 mg of calcium and 2,500 IU of vitamin A, with 20 percent as beta-carotene.

One-A-Day Women's is approved in ConsumerLab.com's latest independent tests, and it was one of the only women's multis tested that didn't contain more niacin than stated on the label. One-A-Day Women's also performed relatively well in the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) test of lead in multivitamins in 2008. Although the test shows that nearly all multivitamins contain small traces of lead (almost 99 percent of 324 multis), some multivitamins had far less lead than others. One-A-Day Women's had 0.513 mcg of lead in a daily serving; the FDA says that safe/tolerable exposure for adult women is 75 mcg per day. One-A-Day Women's contains fish ingredients, so vegans and vegetarians may want to look at Pure Encapsulations Multi t/d (*Est. $33 for 120 capsules). It should be noted that this multi doesn't have any calcium or iron, but Pure Encapsulations Multi t/d doesn't contain gelatin.

ConsumerLab.com is the best source for multivitamin information, including One-A-Day Women's. Full details are only available to subscribers, but it is one of the few sources that test and evaluate multivitamins. The FDA also tests One-A-Day Women's, but again, few details are released and the test was for lead only. User reviews at Drugstore.com and Amazon.com help round out the coverage.