Why should you take Nutritional Supplements?

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A busy lifestyle leaves little time for planning meals and

cooking. It's far too easy to fill up the diet with empty

calories in fast and convenience foods. Packaged and prepared

mixes make life easy, but seldom provide all the nutrients your

body needs to stay healthy. A good multinutrient supplement can

help fill in the gaps in your diet when you're too busy to eat

balanced meals. But what if you eat a healthy diet? Do you still

need to take vitamin and nutritional supplements? According to

most experts on nutrition and the American diet, the answer is,

quite honestly, yes. Over the past ten years, scientists who

study medical conditions like diabetes and coronary disease have

all noted alarming rises in the incidence of those diseases.

It's not just that there are more people being diagnosed with

diabetes or heart disease. The profile of those being diagnosed

has changed dramatically. For the first time ever, doctors are

seeing significant number of children with adult onset diabetes

and other conditions that were once thought to exclusively begin

in middle age. Nearly every one of those conditions has been

linked to diet and nutritional deficiencies. Why is this

happening in a society as wealthy and well-fed as ours? The

reasons are all wrapped up in our way of life and the changes to

society and the environment over the past 100 year some

nutriitonists argue. One hundred years ago, most foods were

grown and raised on small farms. Farmers rotated their crops

regularly to get the best harvests because they knew that the

soil needed replenishing in order for the food to grow healthy

and strong. Their livestock was fed a varied diet because the

animals were allowed to free range and graze at will. This meant

that the meat derived from those animals contained the nutrients

from the food that they ate. The vegetables and fruits that

appeared on the dinner table had been sliced and cooked in the

kitchen, not canned months or even years earlier. There wasn't

as much of a need to add vitamins that processing robs from food

simply because the foods weren't processed. Farming has changed

in major ways since then. Crops are grown in soil that has been

sterilized and robbed of its natural nutrients by overuse,

insecticides, pesticides and chemicals meant to promote large,

attractive fruits and vegetables--at the cost of vitamins and

minerals. The natural fertilizers that kept soil healthy have

been replaced with chemical fertilizers that contain only a few

of the needed chemicals, and none of the enzymes that allow the

body to process and absorb vitamins and minerals from food. Mass

production and processing robs foods of still more nutrients.

Cooking and canning and sterlization methods can remove or

destroy as much as 90% of the vitamins present in a fresh peach

or carrot. Even many foods that appear fresh are likely to have

been sprayed with gasses meant to preserve their color and

crispness as they travel across country. The end result is

vegetables and fruits that contain a fraction of the vitamins

and minerals that the same foods contained 100 years ago, much

of it unusable by the body as it is. When you add that to the

fact that most Americans eat diets that are high on convenience

and low on nutrition, the need to add vitamins and other

nutritional supplements becomes very clear. It's important to

remember that taking nutritional supplements is not a substitute

for a healthy diet. They are meant to be exactly

that--supplements--to fill in the gaps that our lifestyle leaves

in our diets. Most doctors recommend, at the very least, a

high-quality multi-vitamin supplement daily, but nowadays

sophisticated nutraceutical companies are producing products

that go far above basic vitamins and minerals. These products

may include speciality antioxidants that are much more powerful

than vitamins, and other substances beneficial for health that

won't be found in any typical multivitamin supplement, such as

enzymes for digestive health, herbal extracts, or other natural

supplements. Whatever kind of supplement you decide to take,

it's still important to consult with your doctor to let him know

of your intent.



About the author:

Dan Ho is chief editor of one of the most popular resources for

nutritional, dietary, and herbal supplements on the Internet,

http://www.nutritional-supplement-info.com, which discusses

their pros and cons, and how to choose a quality supplement.