Food is a substance that nourishes your body to build up and maintain your physical well being. Supplements should only be used to “supplement” an already healthy diet…not in place of a healthy diet.
Many people these days have vitamin deficiencies due to eating too many refined foods that are over processed, altered, and manufactured. These types of food products contain little or no nutritional value. Your body recognizes nutrients in foods best and gains the most nutrition from these real products. The more a product is processed and manufactured, the less nutrition your body will be able to glean from it.
This idea also translates to supplements. The more the vitamin or mineral is processed or taken out of its natural environment, the less our bodies are able to use it. Think about this: an orange contains vitamin C and fiber and a bunch of other nutrients. Those other nutrients help the vitamin C to be absorbed in the best way that your body understands.
Now think about this: a regular multivitamin supplement contains many different nutrients taken from many different sources. Those nutrients are taken out of their natural environment and processed to fit into a tiny little pill with many other nutrients that were also taken out of their natural environment.
When put together they cannot possibly be expected to perform the same way as they do when they are in a food. Many supplements use a synthetic, or man-made, form of the vitamin which is even less likely to be absorbed in your body. They take the vitamin out of the food, analyze it, and reproduce it using different ingredients. Obviously, your body is not going to recognize that product as food, because it is man-made.
Now for a happy medium: there are now supplements on the market that use real foods that are dried and pressed into tablet form or left as powders. These supplements may be considered low potency in terms of the actual amount of product in them, but in reality, because the nutrients are in forms that our bodies can use and recognize, we get more out of them than in the supplements with a high quantity of vitamins. Real food supplements are better absorbed, better utilized and exert more nutritional value than other supplements.
Using real foods and real food supplements provides a buffer for the body. If you are taking in a large amount of iron in pill form, it may not be recognized in your body as food and can either just be expelled without being used or cause problems with imbalances causing toxic effects. Real foods have just the right ratio of nutrients to be as efficient as possible.
This ratio is very important because nutrients are always helping each other out. Vitamin D is necessary for calcium absorption. The B vitamins are crucial in the metabolism (or processing) of most of the vitamins and systems in your body. If your ratios are off, your body will feel it. Small signs and symptoms are always present to let you know if your body is off.
In the end, it is important to get as much nutrition as possible from real foods that have been processed as little as possible. Right from your garden is always best! If you are interested in nutrition supplements, go to your local nutrition store and tell them you’d like a real food supplement and ask them all about it. They are paid to know their product so don’t be afraid to ask which brand is best.
Keep Well…Kristy
