Can we get all our vitamins and anti-oxidants from food or do we need supplements?
We have been recommended supplements at some point in our life. Sometimes doctors say it’s necessary due to deficiency in the blood. Sometimes advertisements say they help us when we are kids or pregnant or ageing.
These advisors usually claim that we are not getting enough nutrition from our food; hence we should eat these supplements.
Let us first try to understand why we are not getting enough nutrition from our food. Mainly because when we plan meals we plan according to taste or what will kids eat or what other family members like eating. We miss out the important aspect of including a balanced meal which is essential for the uptake of sufficient nutrients. That is the reason why we are lacking.
Now we must understand why advertisers are winning. They have added loads of sugars and artificial Flavors to their products making it taste better and marketed them so well that we are willing to buy most expensive products to ensure that we buy good health with good taste. Ironically, we end up having good taste and bad health.
What we must understand is Nutrition is not expensive. I wish to give a simple example of research.
In a study, it was shown that when we extract Vitamin C from an apple then it’s is very less, but when a person eats the whole apple the antioxidant activity of the vitamin C is comparatively very high. That means, extracted vitamin C cannot provide enough nutrition to our body as compared to the same whole fruit and these are expensive than natural apples. Just like one brick cannot become our shelter but we need the entire home for that. This is true for all other nutrients be it proteins, vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids etc.
This is where supplements fail; they cannot be the correct replica of what nature provides us.
It's best to improve the diet before using supplements, That's because vitamins and minerals are most potent when they come from food. In food, they are accompanied by many other beneficial nutrients, including hundreds of carotenoids, flavonoids, minerals, and antioxidants that aren't in most supplements. Plus, food tastes better than supplements and is often less expensive.
For more such information visit The Basic Meals' website.
