They’ve been at the mall for years, but, until recently, smoothies were made only with fruit, yogurt and a few other healthy ingredients.

Recently, however, university kiosks around the country have been infusing smoothies with multicolored pills made by Met-Rx Engineered Nutrition.

The pills, or boosters, pack a plethora of vitamins and minerals into each fruit or yogurt smoothie. But, even without the boosters, smoothies have 100 percent of the recommended daily allowance of vitamins A, C, D and E.

“You can’t really taste any difference,” said Dennelle Dohse, sophomore in accounting and a clerk at the West Side Market in Union Drive Community Center. “But if we don’t blend them well, they can taste a little chalky.”

There are six varieties of the Met-Rx boosters — fat burner, protein, multivitamins, immune, memory and energy. These boosters are added to smoothies from the Freshens Yogurt franchise, which has an official partnership with Met-Rx Sports Nutrition.

For this reason, boosted smoothies can’t be found at North Grand Mall or the Memorial Union. They aren’t even in Campustown or in all the smoothie kiosks on the ISU campus.

“We sell tea infused with many healthy herbs,” said Jess Clyde, manager of Stomping Grounds, 303 Welch Ave. “But we don’t use supplements in anything we serve.”

But the West Side Market in the Union Drive Community Center has sold the Met-Rx boosters since it first opened. The small store has been open for about one year, and it is the only venue within walking distance of the ISU campus where the boosters are available.

The counter at the Union Drive Community Center has a small blue booklet containing information about the Met-Rx boosters, in which each type of booster is listed in detail — all nutrients, amino acids and vitamins used in the pills are meticulously described.

“The energy and fat burner are the most popular,” Dohse said. “The fat burner especially will give you an extra dose of energy.”

It is clearly stated in the booklet, on virtually every page, that the Food and Drug Administration does not verify any of the claims made by Met-Rx regarding the nutrition found in its booster supplements. According to the Met-Rx booklet, the pills have much more than the daily requirements of many vitamins.

The memory booster has 16,667 percent of the daily requirement of Vitamin B12 and 1,667 percent of the daily thiamin required.

The immune booster has 833 percent of the daily Vitamin C requirements and 300 percent of the Vitamin E requirement.

Representatives for Met-Rx and Freshens were unavailable for comment.

Nutritional supplements and FDA approval operate with a gray area because there is more than one level of approval for non-pharmaceutical products, said Paul Flakoll, professor of food science and human nutrition and director of the ISU Center for Designing Foods to Improve Nutrition.

“By selling the products, they have FDA approval, but their statements about the effects of those products is not approved,” Flakoll said.

Every smoothie sold at the West Side Market contains one pill free of charge. Additional pills are 49 cents each. A 21-ounce drink costs $3.99 and a 32-ounce version costs $4.99.

“[The boosters] are a high protein product that goes right along with the high-protein craze going on today,” Flakoll said.