Vitamin Supplements to Stay Healthy (part 1)

We are encouraged by the Food Guide Pyramid to eat recommended servings of dairy, poultry, whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and complex carbohydrates so we will get all the protein, vitamins, minerals, and food energy we need to live and thrive. One would expect that by eating a healthy diet we would have a very good chance of getting the nutrients we need to stay healthy. But so many factors affect the nutrient value of the food we eat. By the time freshly picked fruit gets transported to the grocery store, on display for you to buy, home to your refrigerator and finally eaten many of the vitamins have already been lost. If you cook your fresh fruit and vegetables even more nutrients are lost.

As shown in the USDA food consumption surveys that although Americans are making improvements in our eating habits most of us do not consume the full five to nine servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every day as is recommended. But even if we did eat properly every single day, the nutrient values in our food may not be sufficient to meet our body’s daily requirements to maintain good health. There is no way to get the vitamins and minerals we need other than through the food we eat and any supplements we might take. Vitamins are organic substances that originate mainly in plant tissues and are essential for growth, reproduction and maintaining health. Our bodies can not synthesize vitamins in adequate amounts so we must obtain them through our diet.

Our bodies require certain minerals to stay healthy. Unlike vitamins, minerals are not organic. They do not contain carbon. Minerals are elements that originate in the Earth and can not be made by living organisms. Plants get minerals from the soil and we get those minerals through the plants we eat or the animals we eat that have eaten the plants. Mineral content in soil can vary considerably from place to place. Adding to concerns about the nutrient value of the fresh foods we consume is the nutrition value of the highly processed foods we eat. They allow us to quickly prepare a meal but they deprive us of the natural, whole food nutrients our bodies need.

Scientific and historic studies show that the nutrient content of food decreases with processing.Processing reduces the amount of every known essential vitamin. When brown rice was originally refined and white rice began to be consumed many people died of beriberi because the B-complex vitamins were destroyed. Cooking meat can reduce Vitamin B5 by as much as 50% while processing vegetables can reduce it by up to nearly 80%. Refining, cooking and canning can destroy as much as 95% of foliate. Milling wheat to white flour reduces the natural food complex vitamin and mineral content by as much as 60%.

Besides processing our food we add substances like sodium bicarbonate to foods to preserve them. When it is added to peas and green beans so they will retain their color it destroys the thiamin in them. We have also introduced artificial things into our diets, for example, the artificial fat olestra (Olean). It robs the body of Vitamins A, D, E, K and carotenoid antioxidants. When we irradiate meat and other foods the characteristics of those foods change.