by Vexed » Wed 29 Mar 2006, 17:50:04
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Specop_007', 'L')ets say you have 2 people who are roughly the same. Same health, age, job, hobbies etc.
Lets say 1 person goes on a diet that involves 200 calories a day but 100% of all recommended vitamins and minerals. The other person goes on a diet of 2000 calories a day but is getting 25% of recommended vitamins and minerals.
Who will begin to suffer first? Over the long term, who will suffer more?
I think it is obvious that the vitamin taker will suffer the most.
Without going into massive detail (although I am tempted because keeping this short will lead to a convoluted answer), I will point out it is the "synergy" of the foods we eat that give them power. A vitamin tablet is generally formulated (hopefully) from specific known elements. Food, on the other hand, still has many elements we cannot fully account for, and are likely quite relevant to our well-being.
Science knows what is in your multi-vitamin. But it is still stuck trying to figure out how those nutrients work together in the human body: In what amount, what form, and through what processes do they give benefit? This is why there are so many conflicting clinical studies. Different doses, taken in different ways (orally, intravenously, etc.), along with different nutrients currently in the participant's systems, often end with very different results.
For example, a tablet of Vitamin C is just ascorbic acid. But science has yet to decipher how that tablet of vitamin c is exactly utilized by the human body. Which amino acids are necessary to activate its beneficial qualities? Which other vitamins, and in what amount, does vitamin c need to enhance the immune system, build collagen, or improve cancer survival? Do Vit c absorbtion rates increase or decrease in the presence of other catalysts? There is a lot science doesn't know.
If you just take vitamins, you are selectively increasing specific nutrients in your system. You are not creating the energy or synergy that the human body most definitely needs unless you are ingesting Whole Foods.
Here is a recent new article on this emerging idea of vitamin synergy:
A new study has found that supplements of vitamin C can largely stop the serious depletion of vitamin E that occurs in smokers, demonstrating for the first time in humans a remarkable interaction between these two antioxidants as they work together.