In a world full of synthetic, processed and denatured foods, there has never been a better time to supplement with extra vitamins and minerals.
Unfortunately, many vitamin supplements also fall into the synthetic processed category. You may be surprised to hear that many high-street supplements ( particularly those in tablet form) often contain synthetic chemicals, artificial additives, preservatives, fillers, binders, sugars, colourings, modified starches and other nasties. These can make up to 85% of the total ingredients. These tablets have a tendency to either pass through the digestive system unused or even get stuck in the digestive tract so they neither disintegrate or pass through.
What are synthetic vitamins?
Synthetic or man-made vitamins are isolated vitamins that do not match the vitamins and minerals found in nature and they account for the majority of vitamin supplements made today.
When you take a synthetic vitamin, you are taking an extract of a vitamin or a nutrient in isolation. Our bodies have difficulty in processing this extract. This is because they are designed to process the vitamin as it appears in whole foods with all the necessary nutrients and enzymes to balance and complement each other to allow for easy absorption and completion.
Many of the synthetic vitamins on sale today are manufactured in laboratories using ingredients that are not made from food. Many are made from rocks ( calcium carbonate, magnesium oxide etc) and from petrochemicals or coal tar.
“Synthetic vitamins: these are highly inferior to vitamins from natural (animal or vegetable) sources, also the synthetic product is well known to be far more toxic.” Dr. Casimir Funk, Polish biochemist and discoverer of “Vital Amines” (Vitamins) circa early 1900’s.
Vitamins and minerals make each other work and shouldn’t be separated. Vitamin D is necessary for the body to absorb calcium. Copper is necessary for vitamin C activity etc. Synthetic vitamins don’t contain trace minerals which means they rely on and deplete the body’s own mineral reserves.
What are food-based vitamin supplements ?
Food-based supplements are derived from whole foods. This means that the vitamins found within these supplements are not isolated but instead are complex structures consisting of a variety of enzymes, coenzymes, antioxidants, trace elements, activators and many other factors which all work together to enable the vitamin complex to do its job in the body. Whole-food vitamin supplements are made from concentrated grasses, algae, vegetables, leaves, bark, roots, berries, fruits, and ocean vegetation, among other superb natural ingredients. They contain probiotics, chelated and trace minerals, high-quality proteins, amino acids, a full supply of amazing vitamins and essential fatty acids (EFAs).
Dr Royal Lee was a pioneer in the field of vitamin research and his ideas were years ahead of his time.
He published a paper The Truth About Vitamins in the 1950’s in which he stated that the key to understanding a vitamin lay in the idea of what a vitamin really is. From his studies in science, Lee knew that one of the basic tenets of holism — The whole is greater than the sum of its parts — is absolutely critical to understanding how a vitamin interacts with the body. Vitamins as they appear in food are never single, isolated chemicals. Instead they are groups of biochemically interdependent substances that all work together—each co-factor performing a specific function—to deliver a collective nutritive effect to the body. Not only that, they could only come from living cells as opposed to synthetic chemicals.
Dr. Lee explained that ‘vitamins are biological mechanisms and just like a watch, they consist of a multitude of parts – some of which we may never identify – they act to deliver to the body a transcendent vitamin effect. The chemist who isolates a few parts of a vitamin complex and expects these parts to deliver the effect of the entire mechanism might a well slap a few pieces of brass on his or her wrist and ask them to tell time.’
Do I still need to supplement if my diet is good?
Soil quality
Over the last 70 years or so, the levels of vitamins and nutrients in our foods has decreased dramatically due to a fall in soil fertility. Today’s agricultural system doesn’t allow time for the soil to replenish itself and instead depends on chemical fertilisers that can’t replace the variety of nutrients that humans and plants need. Also the delay between harvesting and eating adds to the reduction in nutrient content.
A study published by Mineral Resources UK shows two of the most concerning results to be two staples of the British diet – potatoes and carrots. Between 1940 and 1991, carrots lost 75% of their magnesium, 48% of their calcium, 46% of their iron and 75% of their copper, whilst potatoes lost 30% of their magnesium, 35% of their calcium, 45% of their iron and 47% of their copper. You would need to have eaten ten tomatoes in 1991 to have obtained the same copper intake as one tomato would have given you in 1940. For the full report click here.
Nutritional deficiencies
In the 1930’s, Dr Lee’s friend, dentist Dr Weston Price embarked upon a round the world mission to document and photograph the effects of processed foods on the dental and physical health of people around the world. All of his findings were published in the book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. This wonderfully written and informative book proved that poor nutrition is not only behind tooth decay but other modern diseases like diabetes, stroke, arthritis, cancer and heart disease .It showed that this list of diseases would appear wherever in the world processed foods and grains were becoming popular. Dr Lee is famous for his quote “One of the biggest tragedies of human civilization is the precedence of chemical therapy over nutrition. It’s a substitution of artificial therapy over nature, of poisons over food, in which we are feeding people poisons trying to correct the reactions of starvation.” — Dr. Royal Lee, 1951
Nowadays, more and more people in the Western world suffer from chronic diseases – diseases that previously appeared only in old age have now become a lot more common in young adults and children. In addition to the factors mentioned above, other factors which can be detrimental to health include medical drugs, unnatural nutrition i.e lack of living food ( too much processed food), toxic metals, electro magnetic pollution and lack of exercise in natural, unpolluted surroundings.
Dr Paul Seeger, a German cancer researcher conducted many experiments which showed that the virulence of cancer cells depended on the nutritional status of the patient. Another study found that viruses which attack patients who are deficient in protective nutrients such as selenium and vitamin E will tend to mutate into very virulent and lethal forms.
Anti-nutrients
On top of this, since the 1950s , over 3000 man-made chemicals have found their way into the food chain, along with antibiotics, pesticides and hormone residues. These chemicals are known as ‘anti-nutrients’ which means they can stop existing nutrients from being successfully absorbed by the body.
So at a time where we should be taking in more nutrients to combat all of these extra toxins, we are actually taking in less.
There is no substitute for eating a varied diet with a wide range of seasonal and organic foods and choosing these foods wherever possible will greatly reduce your toxic load. In today’s world, however, it’s not always easy to obtain all the necessary levels of nutrients that our bodies need. A high-stress, fast-paced lifestyle can make it very difficult for us to be able to take in all the required vitamins and mineral from food alone. Boosting nutrient intake with a supplement that is a close to its natural ‘food state’ as possible can help to achieve optimum nutrition.
For detoxifying from the effects of modern living and to protect yourself from those that can be avoided, consider also using cleanse, detox and alkalising supplements.
