If you're taking vitamin supplements in any form other than liquid or gel cap (or flintstones gummies)you may as well just be throwing your cash straight in the toilet. Almost none of them dissolve before you pass them and you get no nutritional value from them if you can't absorb them.
Yes, most of the vitamins and supplements you buy in the store fail to do much good because, as you indicated, you can't absorb them. However, whole food / organic vitamins address this issue just as liquid vitamins.
For example, most vitamin D / calcium supplements are made from limestone (crushed rocks) and your body simply cannot absorb more than about 10% of the nutritional content. Use a high quality organic, whole food supplement such as New Chapter Bone Strength Take Care and you are ingesting cultured kelp ... A whole food that your body CAN process and absorb.
Other Issues with other supplements :Many similar issues arise with many other supplements. You just have to do your homework or know someone who has the knowledge. For example, 90% of all Fish Oil for sale in the U.S. is crap extracted from rank fish from the Argentina sardine/anchovy trade. Their purification process almost totally eliminates the benefit of the product but manufacturers continue to sell it as an anti-oxidant loaded fish oil. Most of the
Krill oil manufacturers do the same. A high fish oil (New Chapter, Source Naturals, Nordic Naturals) will be purified with a more expensive process that will not spoil the oil.
I could go on and on ...
