There is no doubt that you should be taking your multi-vitamins each day. Due to the decreasing quality of our soils and the increasing amount of pollutants, we are eating plenty but we are still starving and multivitamin supplements can be a great way to get the extra vitamins and minerals that are lacking in everyday foods.
The good news is that given proper natural nutrition, the human body has an amazing ability to heal itself.
However before you reach for your supplements, bear in mind that not all multivitamins are derived from natural nutritive sources like plants, fruits and vegetables. Many are synthetically-derived, laboratory simulations of real vitamins, including some common ones like vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and vitamin E (dl-tocopheryl acetate). These are the same types of "vitamins" used to enrich many processed foods, and they simply do not assimilate well into the body because they are not truly natural.
Real vitamins are the living ones derived from whole foods and that are maintained in their natural states. These contain the necessary cofactors and enzymes which help the body to process and use them, and they provide the most benefit to the body.
What You Need to Know About Isolated Compounds vs. Whole Food Supplements In a Nutshell
Supplements made with isolated nutrients are probably the least effective way to present the body with what it needs. A multivitamin with many isolated ingredients crammed into a capsule is no better. It may be tempting to think
that the supplement that is best is the one that delivers the highest milligram amount of a nutrient. But the reality is that a small amount of a nutrient in whole food form is many times more effective than a large dose in isolated
form. As food forms of nutrients are
slowly digested and absorbed, nutrients become available to be utilized over a period of several hours. Much of the large dose of an isolated nutrient is wasted because the body can only use a small amount at one time.
Although there are many opinions on the types of food we should be eating, and the ideal ratio of these foods, everyone from all corners of the diet and nutrition world seems to agree on one thing: No matter which foods we choose and in what ratios we eat them, whole foods are better for you than refined foods.
