Somebody asked me the other day why we sell vitamins and supplements when studies abound saying we can get everything our bodies need from a healthy diet.
I couldn’t have been happier.
It is true, one probably can get all the nutrients and vitamins one needs through eating right and keep the body functioning well with the proper amount of exercise. Supplement bashers of all stripes, especially medical researchers, have no problem opining that dietary supplementation is a waste and of little force because, they drone, we can get everything we need…yada, yada, yada.
We’re not arguing with them. They are just missing the point.
How many weeks running have you had your two to three servings of cold-water fish or other source of omega fatty acids? How many consecutive days running have passed since you had your five daily servings (at the very least) of fruits and vegetables? The government recommends at least two cups of fruits and three cups of veggies daily.
Ok – have you had an apple in the last couple of days? Something? Anything?
Then there is the whole issue of processed and fast foods. The fact of the matter is America is tilted toward fast and convenient; healthy is probably back deep in the pack, running well off the pace. How many fast-food restaurants do you pass on your way home? Now, how many fresh produce stands do you pass along the same route.
A recent New York Times article stated Americans eat 31 percent more packaged and processed food than fresh food. The Center for Disease Control states the average American eats three burgers and four orders of fries per week.
That ain’t cold-water fish.
The percentage of kids who are overweight has tripled over the last 30 years, and obesity has become such a pandemic that governments have considered a weight tax on sweetened foods.
That’s why we sell natural, high-quality vitamins and supplements. We sell them because we – you, me, most of us – do not eat as well as we should for optimum health and we need them. This really isn’t news.
A 1998 article in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that since 1970, 25 percent of Americans regularly consumed a daily multivitamin and folic acid, and – lo and behold – these folks and their children were healthier.
There are just a myriad of vitamins, fats and nutrients that our bodies need for peak performance and health, and most likely we’re not eating the right foods or the right foods in the right amounts to get them.
If you’re eating the right things in the right amounts, then you may not need to supplement with something specific or generally with a daily vitamin. But before you start dancing on the tables, you’re still not out of the woods, tough guy. There’s also the issue of the laundry list of enzymes and hormones your body stops producing with age. That’s stops producing with a capital “stops.”
That’s for next week. For now go eat an apple and take your vitamin.
Copyright ©2010 Jim Mayfield
Showing posts with label wholefood vitamins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wholefood vitamins. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
New You for the New Year - Part I: Vitamins
Well, it’s that time of year again. You know the time.
You were reminded of it as you cinched up that new Christmas belt that was your size last year.
And again when you bent over to lace up the freshly unwrapped sneakers and realized high-tops would have been an excellent idea to avoid having to reach quite that far.
OK. We all need to get back in shape. It’s the same resolution every year, but this time let’s not savage ourselves and make it our own Day of Atonement; let’s just get to it – shall we?
Let’s also keep it simple. My own favorite personal philosophy. Unless you actually enjoy knotty and labyrinthine procedures – like building the space shuttle – there’s really no reason this whole supplement thing needs to get complicated.
How about a basic supplementation plan in three quick installments. This week: vitamins; next week: omega fatty acids, followed by beneficial flora – bacteria we need – in week three. Hang on. Here we go.
Vitamins. There are 13 of them. Take your pick, real or…unreal – as in synthetic.
Grab your bottle of Flinstones there on the counter. Notice it contains “vitamin C.” You then skim to the ingredients and find it does, in fact, contain sodium ascorbate, which many of us recognize as a form of vitamin C.
Not quite so fast, tough guy. Sodium ascorbate is a buffered form of ascorbic acid, which on some level over the years we relate to vitamin C. But neither ascorbic acid nor sodium ascorbate IS vitamin C. Sorry to have to break that to you.
Ascorbic acid is a component of vitamin C, but if you only ingest ascorbic acid, you’re eating what amounts to the outer wrapper of the chemical nutrient we label vitamin C.
Vitamins are tiny bio-chemical complexes, the whole of which are greater than the sum of their parts. Without any one part, the nutritional effectiveness is diminished or lost. Think about it. Do you want the outer ring that holds everything that is vitamin C together or do you want the whole enchilada?
Most of the vitamins found on shelves are of the synthetic variety. Man-made chemical isolates (as in outer ring only) of vitamins that occur naturally. They are cheap to manufacture, market and sell, and they are...well, cheap.
Frankly, when your body gets to a synthetic chemical that purports to be some portion of a vitamin or nutrient, it has no idea what to do with it. And many times, it does absolutely nothing with it, not because it doesn’t want to help you out but because it can’t.
The alternative to the man-made vitamin variety is the natural, whole food vitamin. It is essentially exactly what the name implies. Whole, complete food.
The pure, non-chemical manufacturing process for natural vitaimins involves removing the water and fiber from vitamin-rich plants and then culturing and fermenting the result into a predigested natural food. In addition to recognizing and using the nutrients, your body doesn’t have to supply any “missing links” from its own stores.
You can find a number of natural whole food vitamin selections here. One of the first things you’ll notice is that whole food vitamins are more expensive. A number of factors are at work here.
Distilling natural food and nutrients is a more expensive process. The natural vitamin manufacturers are also outside the major marketing chain of the big three chemical suppliers to the world’s vitamin makers: Hoffman-La Roche, Ltd., a subsidiary of Swiss drug giant Roche Holding AG; BASF AG of Germany and France’s Rhone Poulenc.
Those three companies control over 75 percent of the world market for human and animal vitamins. Talk about your economies of scale. It all boils down to the old adage you get what you pay for.
So chuck the man-made chemical pills called Flintstones and OneADays (both made by Bayer) and get on a good, solid, natural vitamin your body can use.
It’s a good start and won’t hurt at all – not nearly as much as all those situps you’re committing to right about now. Put down that cupcake, cupcake.
Next week: Omega oils.
Copyright ©2009 Jim Mayfield
You were reminded of it as you cinched up that new Christmas belt that was your size last year.
And again when you bent over to lace up the freshly unwrapped sneakers and realized high-tops would have been an excellent idea to avoid having to reach quite that far.
OK. We all need to get back in shape. It’s the same resolution every year, but this time let’s not savage ourselves and make it our own Day of Atonement; let’s just get to it – shall we?
Let’s also keep it simple. My own favorite personal philosophy. Unless you actually enjoy knotty and labyrinthine procedures – like building the space shuttle – there’s really no reason this whole supplement thing needs to get complicated.
How about a basic supplementation plan in three quick installments. This week: vitamins; next week: omega fatty acids, followed by beneficial flora – bacteria we need – in week three. Hang on. Here we go.
Vitamins. There are 13 of them. Take your pick, real or…unreal – as in synthetic.
Grab your bottle of Flinstones there on the counter. Notice it contains “vitamin C.” You then skim to the ingredients and find it does, in fact, contain sodium ascorbate, which many of us recognize as a form of vitamin C.
Not quite so fast, tough guy. Sodium ascorbate is a buffered form of ascorbic acid, which on some level over the years we relate to vitamin C. But neither ascorbic acid nor sodium ascorbate IS vitamin C. Sorry to have to break that to you.
Ascorbic acid is a component of vitamin C, but if you only ingest ascorbic acid, you’re eating what amounts to the outer wrapper of the chemical nutrient we label vitamin C.
Vitamins are tiny bio-chemical complexes, the whole of which are greater than the sum of their parts. Without any one part, the nutritional effectiveness is diminished or lost. Think about it. Do you want the outer ring that holds everything that is vitamin C together or do you want the whole enchilada?
Most of the vitamins found on shelves are of the synthetic variety. Man-made chemical isolates (as in outer ring only) of vitamins that occur naturally. They are cheap to manufacture, market and sell, and they are...well, cheap.
Frankly, when your body gets to a synthetic chemical that purports to be some portion of a vitamin or nutrient, it has no idea what to do with it. And many times, it does absolutely nothing with it, not because it doesn’t want to help you out but because it can’t.
The alternative to the man-made vitamin variety is the natural, whole food vitamin. It is essentially exactly what the name implies. Whole, complete food.
The pure, non-chemical manufacturing process for natural vitaimins involves removing the water and fiber from vitamin-rich plants and then culturing and fermenting the result into a predigested natural food. In addition to recognizing and using the nutrients, your body doesn’t have to supply any “missing links” from its own stores.
You can find a number of natural whole food vitamin selections here. One of the first things you’ll notice is that whole food vitamins are more expensive. A number of factors are at work here.
Distilling natural food and nutrients is a more expensive process. The natural vitamin manufacturers are also outside the major marketing chain of the big three chemical suppliers to the world’s vitamin makers: Hoffman-La Roche, Ltd., a subsidiary of Swiss drug giant Roche Holding AG; BASF AG of Germany and France’s Rhone Poulenc.
Those three companies control over 75 percent of the world market for human and animal vitamins. Talk about your economies of scale. It all boils down to the old adage you get what you pay for.
So chuck the man-made chemical pills called Flintstones and OneADays (both made by Bayer) and get on a good, solid, natural vitamin your body can use.
It’s a good start and won’t hurt at all – not nearly as much as all those situps you’re committing to right about now. Put down that cupcake, cupcake.
Next week: Omega oils.
Copyright ©2009 Jim Mayfield
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