Micronutrients – Vitamins, Minerals and Phytochemicals

You might might have heard people say that there is no need to supplement if you eat a balanced diet. To me it is not that straight forward. The food we eat, the environment where we are living in, are not the same as what they used to be.

As you may know most of the food sold in our supermarkets is nutritionally compromised. Often covered in toxins, pesticides and chemicals, often come from from miles away, and grown in mineral deficient soils. Even if we eat all organic, or even from our own garden we are exposed to far more environmental and pollution stresses than our bodies are designed to handle – radiation from x-rays, EMFs, airplane flights and cars, chlorines and fluorides in the water, stressful jobs and lifestyle.

Do we supplement with pills to compensate the deficiency? I cannot tell you if you should or not. it is entirely up to you. However there are a few things you want to consider before deciding what forms to take.

natural or synthetic

very few vitamins sold are totally natural, simply because of the cost. Synthetics are, at best, about 50 percent as effective as natural vitamins (some totally useless) and can suppress the bod ability to absorb natural vitamins. Note that many commercially made supplements are synthesised by the large pharmaceutical and chemical compounds from what they use to make their drugs (coal tar, wood pulp, petroleum products, waste, shells, animal byproducts etc).  Many supplants are sold in a single form. though in nature, vitamins do not exist in isolation. They exist in complex to help absorb and work in harmony together.

As I said it is up to you to decide if / what supplements you take. If you do it is best to take “super food” or “food based” supplements in my opinion. This way you are getting a full complement of vitamins and minerals as well as many that have not been discovered. There are a few that may need to be taken in a single form such as vitamin D, B12, magnesium , depending on the availability of the products and personal choices.

After all it is still a supplement. The bulk of your daily calorie should come from  a balanced diet.