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 micrograms (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 800 international units (IU) of vitamin D, 450 mg of calcium and 2,500 IU of vitamin A with 25 percent as beta-carotene.

One-A-Day Women's earned approval in ConsumerLab.com's independent testing, 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 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 did), 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. In comparison, the women's multivitamin with the most lead -- NutriBiotic Ultimate Matrix -- had 4.92 mcg per day, which is still below the tolerable level. One-A-Day Women's contains gelatin that is derived from beef or pork, and vegans vegetarians may want to look at Pure Encapsulations Multi T/D (*Est. $30 for 120 tablets). This multi is more expensive, and it doesn't contain iron, but the vegetable tablets don't contain gelatin.

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