Supplements vs Real Food to encourage good health - Safety of Supplements and Depleted Soils

There are many advantages with both supplement and real foods I will go through some of them to help you make up your own mind about which is the better choice:)

Real Foods

The Earth

The truth about the planet earth is that its not providing us with a bountiful harvest as it once did. The earths soil are becoming very depleted and our soils have less and less nutrients in it to grow us the healthy vitamin rich fruit and vegetables that our body requires. This is why gardeners turn to using fertilizers to solve there poor plant growth problems aswell as buying humic acids, the earth used to be rich with humic acids which are organic compounds which have been decomposing over years , these humic acids contain many beneficial bacteria and would provide extremely large harvests rich in flavour and nutrients.

 Vitamins & Minerals

The best thing about vitamins and minerals absorbed from real foods is that there is no chance of overdosing on vitamins (experiencing bad side effects from supplement overdose), when eating real foods we also absorb enzymes which help in digesting and absorbing the food.  The hard thing about getting our vitamins and minerals is not knowing whihc vitamins or minerals we may be deficient in or need to digest to see improvements in health. The best way is a varied diet but depending on your lifestyle and exercise habits you may require more of a certain vitamin or be lacking in some way.

The best way to find out which vitamins and minerals your body needs or is deficient in is to get a a vitamin and mineral analysis done by your docotor, Only then can you concentrate on eating foods rich in the vitamins you may lack or need to perk you up a bit.

Absorption Rate

A big thing about taking supplements that people forget is the absorption rate of certain vitamins and minerals. Its all good to take your multivitamin but what if you found out your body wasn't actually absorbing the vitamins and minerals. With real foods there are enzymes that help you absorb the vitamins from the food.

To show how the type of vitamin or mineral can affect how well or if it is absorbed is take for example take zinc oxide and zinc amino acid chelate. From medical reports i've seen zinc oxide has around 40-60 percent chance of being absorbed by the body where as zinc amino acid chelate has around 80% + chance which shows that some people could be taking there vitamins and not absorbing a thing. The main thing to consider is when buying your multivitamin look for a high quality one which has better quality ingredients in it to give your body the highest possibly chance of getting those precious vitamins.

Overdosing on supplements

The biggest problem with people taking supplements is that a lot of people are getting most of there vitamins and minerals from a supplement rather than real foods, this makes it very easy to overdose on vitamins especially when people like to eat bars or snacks that have added vitamins in it already. (there even adding vitamins minerals to your cereal , supplement mad)

 The downside with vitamins is that you may be taking a general multivitamin but your body may already for example contain high amounts of iron from a high meat diet meaning that extra iron from the multivitamin is not neccessary and is simply wasted or you may experience iron overdosing symptoms.

So again the best way is to stay under the recommended daily intake for your multivitamins as a lot of multivitamins get very close to recommended daily dosage for alot of vitamins and minerals and it doesn't leave much wiggle room to allow for vitamins from other sources or foods during the day. (the RDA/RDI is a very highly debated topic and some believe what you see on the back of supplement bottles is far below what our bodies require, even then its probably best to show lower figures to ppl, but thats a topic for another day)

Another thing about overdosing on supplements is a person who takes a lot of one specific vitamin may be reducing the levels of another in there body because of the extremely high amount of the other vitamin in there body. The body is a very sensitive and needs to be working in harmony with everything in balance.

Competing Supplements

The other problem with supplements is if you are taking all these supplements they are going to start competing to get into your body and they could be cancelling each other out. For example if I take a zinc tablet and then drink a glass of milk , The calcium from the milk takes higher priority than the zinc and the zinc will simply be flushed out.

Sometimes it is best to spread out your vitamin intake throughout the day , the only problem this takes a lot of knowledge about which supplements compete and far to spread them out.

Supplement Benefits

 Supplements can also bring many benefits because the number of amazing products put into supplement form for example I'm a big fan of spirulina , ginseng, maca root these sorts of things cause they can give you added vitamins, minerals and amino acids needed to cope with a busy lifestyle and a regular exercise program. I also feel there is less danger with these natural herbs and things which have simply been dried or put into powdered form then capped.

There are also some great products for people who dont have many vegetables in there diet such as vita greens, and also some great berry antioxidant drinks, 

The best thing I believe is to mix it up and take a combination of supplements and real foods. When eating real foods the most benefit will be from fresh , organic produce or meats.

The best way is to go by how your feel or what sort of day you've had, If its been a hard stressful day you may benefit from a multivitamin , if its been a slow, relaxing day a good varied diet should be enough.

Its really a tricky topic as its impossible to know if you're getting the proper amount of vitamins minerals each day without a proper test, Everyone's body is different and will require different things.  Hope this helped a bit but I think I just made it more confusing.