Did you know 86% of Americans take vitamins or supplements?
The other day I got asked my thoughts on supplementing with synthetic vitamins and minerals so Let’s discuss why I do not promote these as well as what I think about fortified foods. Specially because this leads to people into thinking they can get away with having a poor nutrient diet and then that they can get all their nutrients by supplementing. This also leads to people omitting foods that are nutrient dense specially in certain vitamins and minerals and then expecting to supplement or expect to have them in foods that naturally don’t have these, aka fortified foods. This is mostly seen in vegetable milks, where they add synthetic vitamins and then they claim the non-dairy milk is for example high in calcium or vitamin D.
Instead of focusing on getting nutrients from food, we are advocating to eat a nutritionally poor diet and get away with eating junk food, and then supplement with synthetic vitamins or eat industrialised packaged foods fortified with synthetic vitamins. And not only that but we are also advocating to omit nutrient dense foods and then expecting to find these nutrients in our alternative foods of choice.
And then we wonder why we have an epidemic of disease and such a nutrient deficient population. Do you think your grandparents ate like this? And then we wonder why the older generations were healthier. This is nonsense. And the problem is that the consumer is misinformed. Many think synthetic vitamins are the same as getting them directly from food. Pasture raised or grass fed provide a higher nutrient content such as higher levels of omega 3, vitamin k, d, a,calcium than caged or vegetarian fed cattle or chicken. Choose your eggs, milk, cheese (dairy) wisely!
But this is found in many foods. The food industry adds synthetic vitamins to most of their foods, even bread, pasta and cereal. These specifically are so nutritionally poor that they add synthetic vitamins and then they claim their nutrient content is high.
For example in nature vitamin c comes in a complex. Vitamin c comes with an antioxidant coating which is known as ascorbic acid and then inside you find other vitamins which are P,J and the mineral copper. When you buy vitamin c at the store and you see ascorbic acid you see the synthetic dosage abnormally high compared to the lower amount that would see in naturally occurring ascorbic acid. This disproportion causes a deficiency or antagonistic effect in the other vitamins which we said are P, J and copper. And when you buy vitamin c supplements, they do not even come with the entire complex. besides, synthetic ascorbic acid is very cheap and do you know where they get it from to make it cheap and profitable? From corn starch, corn sugar, or rice starchNot to mention that natural vitamins and minerals also have carotenoids, flavonoids, antioxidants and many more that aren’t found in synthetic vitamins. And decades of research prove that these are essential.
Synthetic vitamins and minerals can be found in supplements or they can be added to foods which is known as fortified foods.
Let’s first discuss why synthetic vitamins and minerals are not the same as naturally occurring.
In nature vitamins and minerals come in a complex with other vitamins, co factors, their own food matrix and enzymes that synenrgestaclly aid in proper absorption and metabolism of these. and that is why there is such a controversy when it comes to synthetic vitamins.
Synthetic vitamins:
• Synthetic vitamins can be toxic
• Synthetic vitamins can cause deficiencies
• Synthetic vitamins are basically artificially fractions of parts of vitamins
• Synthetic vitamins don’t absorb as well as natural vitamins
• Synthetic vitamins don’t have cofactors, enzymes, antioxidants, or the entire food matrix
So the takeaway here is try to get your nutrients directly from food and if you need to supplement always go for a natural or whole food vitamin/mineral complex brand.
And if you need to do synthetic supplements because of a certain condition take them for a short time basis.
#supplements #syntheticvitamins #vitamins
