We know how difficult it is to provide three fresh, balanced meals each day for our family. Yet, many people continue to believe that “we can get everything we need from food.” In practice, even very careful eaters find it difficult to ensure that they receive the range of essential vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients in their daily diet.
Here are some reasons:
Food Choice and Habit
We don’t eat sufficiently wide in variety, often sticking to the few types of food that we like. Spinach may be full of nutrients, but Popeye isn’t necessarily healthy if that’s all he eats.
Over Cooking
Heat destroys many valuable food nutrients. But for the sake of taste, we continue to boil, fry, roast and grill the goodness out of our food.
Variation in Nutrient Content
The same food – cultivated in different locations, planted in different seasons, or processed to different degrees - can end up containing very different nutrient profiles.
For eample let say you eat an orange, Good, you’ve eaten a fresh orange. But one orange can have 5 times more nutritional value than another. Which one did you just eat? Should We Take a Nutritional Supplement?
A nutritional supplement does not replace a healthy diet. But proper supplementation can bridge the gap between what our body needs in optimal nutrition, and what most of us actually get from food.
Who says so?
“Most people do not consume an optimal amount of all vitamins by diet alone. Pending strong evidence of effectiveness from randomized trials, it appears prudent for all adults to take vitamin supplements.” Journal of American Medical Association
“The concern for my patients’ health has led me to recommend a complete nutritional system to my patients.”
Ray Strand, M.D. doctor and author of What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutritional Medicine Could Be Killing You
“One important way to effectively maintain health is to supplement our diets with a full range of vitamins, minerals and antioxidant.”
Ladd McNamara. M.D. practitioner and medical consultant to Fortune 500 companies
“In my opinion, children over one year of age should be on nutritional supplementation… vitamins and minerals should be used in addition to a healthy diet.”
Christine Wood M.D., practicing pediatrician and author of How to Get Kids to Eat Great and Love It!
How to choose an appropriate nutritional supplement?
We are going to explore and try to answer this question in our next post. As for now don’t forget to subscribe to our feeds to ensure that you won’t miss any of our future posts. Please join us in the discussion by writing your comments here.
