One of the key principles of nutrition is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Food provided by nature contains a wide spectrum of different nutritional factors.

Nutritional supplements usually only contain a very small percentage of all the nutritional factors found in foods. Taking a supplement of this kind is not synergy and it’s not a food supplement. This is drug nutrition.

A high percentage of pharmaceuticals are derived from plants. The pharmacologist takes the most powerful portion of the plant and uses this to make the drug. On the other hand, a herbalist will use all of the plant. This is much safer and includes all the synergistic factors contained in the whole plant.

Similarly, to make nutritional supplements, the chemist removes the most active part of the nutritional complex, uses this, and leaves out the rest. This is no longer a food supplement but a weak drug.

Ascorbic Acid or Vitamin C?

If the label on your supplement bottle states that vitamin C is provided only as ascorbic acid, then you are not getting vitamin C, but only a fraction of the vitamin C complex. To get the complex requires the bioflavonoids that always come with ascorbic acid in nature.

Alpha Tocopherol Is Not Vitamin E

If the supplement label states that vitamin E is only provided as alpha tocopherol then the supplement does not contain vitamin E. It contains a fraction of a nutrient. Vitamin E is made up of at least eight elements. Taking just a single element has potentially harmful effects on the body, which requires the whole complex for good health.

Beta Carotene & Vitamin A

If the supplement label states that the precursor to vitamin A is only provided as beta carotene, then you are being shortchanged. What happened to alpha carotene? What happened to the 600 plus pigments that make up the carotenoid complex?

One of the early pioneers of clinical nutrition was Royal Lee. He said back in 1940 that the natural vitamin complexes contain the various closely related principles that are normally found together in foods. That is why synthetic and chemically purified vitamins are not really vitamins at all. They are only fragments of vitamins.

So look at your supplement label. Are you supplementing with foods or are you swallowing a drug?

Popularity: 17% [?]