Much to my mother’s chagrin, I have never quite gotten into the habit of taking a daily vitamin. Now I am a fairly nutritionally minded individual (just don’t ask my gym buddy); this largely means I know my macro-nutrients, the details of the Krebs cycle, what a ketone is, and drink a protein shake after my workouts (most of the time).

But when it comes to a simple daily vitamin, I have never quite gotten there. Perhaps this the byproduct of a mother for whom one vitamin quickly explodes into a dozen more to supplement the first’s deficiencies. Perhaps this is a Pavlovian response to too much vitamin B dumped on a dehydrated and dancing body, and the inevitable sick stomach and vomiting the occurred to often during my undergraduate days. Honestly, the pills are huge, and they scare me a bit.

Of course this is silly, and so I recently decided to try again. I had seen a random commercial for these new adult gummy vitamins (cue awesome music). Ever since I have been casually hunting for them all over the district, but our essentialist-CVSs appear to not carry them.

Last week, while vacationing up north, and randomly in a Walmart in Vermont, (crescendo awesome music) there they were! “VitaCraves“! Ridiculously priced, ridiculously not-“complete” (e.g., 50% Biotin, whatever that is), ridiculously irresistible. They had to go home with me, although with Baudrillard‘s simulacra on the brain I knew they would probably join the other dusty bottles of pills on that shelf I can’t quite reach in my kitchen.

Oh blog reader,  I have no idea what I have done. For these gummy-enhanced vitamins you give 10 calories, but they are the best 10 calories I have ever eaten. Those other vitamins? Let’s admit it, I just forget to take them. These? I am obsessed. You are supposed to take two a day, and I enjoy them a little too much. I quickly found myself wondering if it was okay to take four (or forty) instead. I find myself considering eating only one in the morning  and saving the other for later. I stare at the bottle, willing it to be 24-hours later so that I can take some more. They taste way better than they should.

Most importantly, I get to eat something sugary and delicious and feel good about it — for the first time in my life, however obsessively, I am taking my daily vitamin. My mother would be proud.