I'd been wondering whether I should stay away from nutrition talk as it wasn't really the focus of this thread... but now that someone else brought it up (thanks passthepotatoes) I was thinking to say sort of the opposite about vitamins. That they should be individually tailored and each one given if the diet looks deficient -- but maybe not otherwise. Often with behavior issues vitamins are the first thing tried and I wonder if occasionally it can make it worse. Following PTPs (that's passthepotatoes) point about work-up, rather than just trying supplements, one can test folate and B12, D, and iron and zinc etc, whatever one has the ability to get tested, and then go from there. With the increasing supplementation of kid's snack-foods, cereals and breads etc, it's actually possible with an added supplement to get too much of a good thing.
I think it's also possible for people to be individually sensitive to vitamins or other supplements moreso than others. For me and DS it's B vitamins and zinc. Either is like giving us 4 cups of coffee (and we normally behave as if we'd had a couple cups already).
Here's a great website for looking up the amounts of various vitamins and nutrients in foods both natural foods and processed cereals etc.
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/Okay end of divergence onto nutrition.
Polly
