Choosing Vitamin Supplements for Women - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. It is really important to understand what to look for when you are buying a nutritional supplement or a vitamin, for one reason – supplements are not regulated in this country. Quality is all over the place, and there is no guarantee that what is on the label is what is in the product.So, what you want to look for is, first, go to a reputable health food store. Do not go to a warehouse store or a drug store. Health food stores have higher standards about what they will carry. What you want to look for is that the supplement says that it is food based or a food state. What this means is that the nutrients in the vitamin have been extracted from foods. So the vitamin A comes from a carrot, the Vitamin C comes from citrus. Your body understands this, and it absorbs 95 percent of that, as opposed to 5 percent that would be in a synthetic vitamin. Synthetic vitamins are usually sold at the warehouse stores or the drug stores. So it makes a big difference in getting those because you actually absorb the nutrients from the food state vitamin, and experiencing the results that you are looking for.