TL;DR

• For nutrients like omega-3, status builds up gradually with consistent intake. Taking it consistently is part of how the product works, not separate from the formulation.
• People are worse at judging their own consistency than they think.
• The reasons people stop vary by population. Side effects and forgetting show up strongly in some studies. Lack of awareness and feeling overwhelmed by choice show up strongly in others.
• New habits typically take over two months to feel automatic, so an effortful first few weeks is normal.
• We designed Moment's sachet system and ingredient choices with these barriers in mind, though we can't claim to have measured their effect on adherence directly.

A supplement can be well formulated, carefully sourced and built around solid ingredients. Formulation genuinely matters. Dose, ingredient form and tolerability all affect how well something works. But none of that matters much if it's taken for a week, forgotten for three, and left at the back of a cupboard. For nutrients that build up gradually, adherence isn't separate from formulation. It's part of how the product works.

Some nutrients need sustained intake to show up

Omega-3 is a useful, specific example. It's not a stand-in for "most nutrients."

The omega-3 index measures EPA and DHA as a share of the fatty acids in red blood cell membranes. It's the standard marker of longer-term omega-3 status. A 2023 scoping review of 58 intervention studies found meaningful increases in the index depended on dose, chemical form, duration and baseline status. Combinations of roughly 1,000 to 1,500 mg per day in triglyceride form, taken for at least 12 weeks, generally proved effective.

Different nutrients behave differently. This example doesn't tell you how vitamin C or magnesium behaves. But for omega-3 specifically, sporadic use isn't the same as sustained use, and the review is fairly consistent on that.

People underestimate how inconsistent they really are

Self-reported adherence tends to look better than it actually is. In a study of low-income pregnant women taking a prenatal multivitamin, adherence measured electronically (via a bottle cap that logged every opening) came out to about 68%. Self-reports put it at 77%, and pill counts higher still.

That gap doesn't necessarily mean people were being dishonest. Recall, measurement method and social expectations can all inflate self-reported numbers. But it shows that perceived and measured consistency often diverge.

The World Health Organization has separately estimated that adherence to long-term treatment for chronic disease averages around 50% in developed countries. Supplement-taking isn't the same as managing a chronic prescription. But the basic challenge is the same: doing something daily for months is hard.

The reasons people stop aren't the same everywhere

It's tempting to point to one or two universal culprits, but the research doesn't support that.

A Kenyan study of iron and folic acid supplementation in pregnancy found side effects, forgetfulness and unpleasant smell were the most commonly cited barriers in that population.

A separate trial recruited women who'd already stopped or never started a prenatal because of side effects. Nausea was the dominant complaint. Tablet size, swallowing difficulty, taste and smell were also common. Importantly, lowering the iron dose on its own didn't meaningfully improve adherence or GI symptoms in that trial. Tablet size and form seemed to matter as much as iron content itself.

A more recent study looked at women who were pregnant or undergoing fertility treatment, most of them well-educated and already engaged in their care. It found a different pattern entirely. The biggest barrier was lack of awareness about why supplementation mattered, and feeling overwhelmed by how many products were available. That's not a formulation problem. It's a knowledge and decision-fatigue problem.

Taken together, this points to something more useful than a top-two list of reasons people quit: adherence barriers depend heavily on who you're asking. Some are genuinely product problems: tolerability, tablet size, complexity. Those can be designed around. Others are about whether someone understands and believes supplementation matters for them. No amount of clever packaging fixes that.

What actually helps

Research on habit formation (Lally et al., 2010, UCL) looked at participants whose habit-formation patterns could be reliably modelled. It took a median of 66 days for a new daily behaviour to feel automatic, ranging from 18 to 254 days. The oft-repeated "21 days to form a habit" isn't what this research actually shows.

What does seem to help is repetition in a consistent context. Anchor a new supplement to something you already do daily, coffee, brushing your teeth, a specific meal, rather than relying on remembering it in the abstract.

Formulation and tolerability still matter here too. A randomised crossover trial compared two prenatals: one with a lower iron dose separated from calcium, and one combining a higher iron dose with calcium. The separated, lower-iron version reduced constipation by around 30%. Worth being precise about what that trial showed: compliance was similar between the two formulations. The benefit was in tolerability, not in getting people to take it more consistently. Those are related, but they're not the same outcome, and it would overstate the evidence to claim otherwise.

Why Moment is designed the way it is

We didn't want to treat formulation and daily use as separate problems, so both shaped how we built Moment. One honest caveat: we haven't run our own adherence study. These are design choices intended to reduce friction, not a claim that they've been shown to increase adherence.

Our AM and PM doses come in individually sealed sachets rather than bottles. There's no juggling multiple containers, and each dose stays sealed until it's needed. They're also small enough to carry with you if a morning gets away from you. Each canister also has a built-in tracker. Twisting the lid lines up a dot with the day of the week printed on the canister body, so you can see at a glance whether today's dose has been taken.

On tolerability, we chose chelated forms of minerals such as magnesium and zinc, a formulation decision rather than a claim backed by a specific trial in this article, alongside a fresh, IFOS five-star certified fish oil, chosen for its quality and low oxidation, which can help minimise the fishy aftertaste that puts some people off omega-3.

GI intolerance is a well-documented barrier to sticking with an iron-containing prenatal. The research also suggests iron content alone isn't always the deciding factor, tablet form and individual tolerance matter too. That's why we sell iron separately rather than building a fixed dose into the core sachets. It's there for those who need it, without becoming a barrier for those who don't.

None of this solves the awareness or information side of adherence. That's a different problem, and probably a bigger one for some people than anything a sachet can fix. But for the parts that are genuinely about the product, tolerability, complexity, ease of remembering, we designed around them deliberately, not as an afterthought.

Sources

1. Dempsey M, Rockwell MS, Wentz LM. The influence of dietary and supplemental omega-3 fatty acids on the omega-3 index: A scoping review. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2023;10:1072653. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2023.1072653/full

2. Jasti S, Siega-Riz AM, Cogswell ME, Hartzema AG. Correction for errors in measuring adherence to prenatal multivitamin/mineral supplement use among low-income women. Journal of Nutrition, 2006;136(2):479-483. https://jn.nutrition.org/article/S0022-3166(22)08083-X/pdf

3. World Health Organization. Adherence to Long-Term Therapies: Evidence for Action. Geneva: WHO; 2003. https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/42682

4. Lally P, van Jaarsveld CHM, Potts HWW, Wardle J. How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 2010;40(6):998-1009. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.674

5. Bahati F, Kairu-Wanyoike S, Nzioki JM. Adherence to iron and folic acid supplementation during pregnancy among postnatal mothers seeking maternal and child healthcare at Kakamega Level 5 Hospital in Kenya: a cross-sectional study. Wellcome Open Research, 2021;6:80. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8366300/

6. Nguyen P, Nava-Ocampo A, Levy A, O'Connor DL, Einarson TR, Taddio A, Koren G. Effect of iron content on the tolerability of prenatal multivitamins in pregnancy. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 2008;8:17. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2405769/

7. Breuste NJ, Schippert C, von Versen-Höynck F. Adherence to vitamin and dietary supplement intake in fertility and pregnancy care: insights into knowledge, information satisfaction, and formulation variability. Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 2026;313:17. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00404-025-08288-w

8. Ahn E, Pairaudeau N, Pairaudeau N Jr, Cérat Y, Couturier B, Fortier A, et al. A randomized cross over trial of tolerability and compliance of a micronutrient supplement with low iron separated from calcium vs high iron combined with calcium in pregnant women. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 2006;6:10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1481554/