The Real Need For Vitamins

What is the deal with vitamins?  That's always been my thought.  I've never really been a pill taker, whether its drugs or supplements.  I've never felt the need . . but more importantly, I never really knew the need.  The history of vitamins is an interesting one.  I've sure many of us have heard of the story of sailors getting scurvy which in the mid 1700's was discovered that scurvy was helped out by eating lemons and limes.  Even though at the time they did not know what was in these citrus fruits, they just knew that certain foods helped with certain conditions.  This discovery led to a whole new world of micronutrients.

The first discovered micronutrient was Vitamin B1 also known as Thiamine.  Each new vitamin has been added to the list given letters corresponding with their time of discovery.  We now have Vitamins A - K, all an important part of our diet and health, along with minerals.  Vitamins and minerals are essential because we cannot produce them on our own (except for Vitamin D which acts more like a hormone, and also Vitamin K which can be produced by bacteria in our gut flora).  The true discovery is that if we are deficient in any of these, a whole array of health problems will occur.  Likewise, if we supply ourselves with enough certain vitamins or minerals we will surely see these health problems disappear.  Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel Prize winner, stated, "You can trace every sickness, every disease and every ailment to a mineral deficiency."

All these essential vitamins and minerals are found in the natural foods we eat.  But that brings up my question. Humans have been eating food for thousands of years without needing supplements, so why do we now need to take extra vitamins in our diet today?  I would like to share with you three real needs for vitamins and minerals in our diet today.

1. We Choose Not to Eat Nutrient Rich Foods - This is the sad reality, but we are not Choosing to eat the right foods.  According to CDC, only 14% of adults and only 9% of teens are eating the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables.  Only 14%!  And that's only the recommended servings which is the minimum, which is just barely enough to prevent deficiencies.  We aren't even getting the minimum.  Our plate should be at least half vegetables and fruits - and reports show that on any given day 46% don't even eat one fruit, and 18% don't even eat one vegetable.  Hopefully taking vitamins and minerals can help with these deficiencies.  What is to blame? A little bit is the food pyramid, or the "My Plate" education.  This has focused generally more on grains than anything, with little emphasis on fruits and vegetables.  Part of the blame goes towards processed food and fast food filling our foods with sugar and fats that have little to no nutritional value.  But the real blame is ourselves.  We make these choices.  We are not properly educated, we are not adequately informed and we are bombarded by thousands of unhealthy choices . . . but it all comes down to our choice.  Some say that eating healthy is expensive.  Look around.  Look at the cars we drive, the gadgets we carry, the clothes we wear, the computers we use, and the events and entertainments we attend.  Our body is more important than any of these, and we can't even make the priority to treat it the right way.  We have chosen to fail our own health.  When we are in the hospital with disease, our clothes are going to be in our closets, our car in the driveway, and our TV sitting in our living room.  They will all be there while our health is failing because we have made that choice.  I think we, in general, need to make better priorities.
2. We Live In A Processed World - There is a list of changes in our diet over the last few decades.  The key words that pop out are Refined and Processed.  Refined simply means to take out all nutrients.  We have refined sugar, flour, rice and other items.  These are nutrition-less products that are simply empty calories which provide no nutritional benefits and can do our body great harm.  Processed means that things have been added or has been chemically changed.  Again, we have processed sugar, flour, and rice.  This is the difference between white and brown rice, or white and wheat flour.  These "white" products have been processed and refined.  It has been chemically changed, making it foreign to our body and thus can create harmful reactions.  Some products are processed for preservation.  This is done by either adding salt, saturated fats, or other additives that are harmful to our health.  But this is the world we live in.  We want food now.  Companies need to process their foods to be able to meet the demands.  They replace natural products with processed foods which lack nutrition. A beef burrito may not even be real beef, and yet has a hundred other additives to make it at least taste good. Companies choose alternative products because they are cheap and inexpensive.  They gamble your health for their profit.
3. A Depleting Soil - This is the topic I truly wanted to discuss.  Soil is soil, right?  Well, not exactly.  I found that out just recently as I tried to grow a small garden in our backyard, and nothing grew.  The soil was absolutely no good.  But this is a reality for the whole world.  In the last century the increasing populations have put a high demand on crops.  The increasing demand has depleted value in the soil.  This led to the introduction of synthetic soil.  It was an idea that solved the problem temporally.  Over time, the artificial soil has created a more acidic environment, reducing the value of the soil over all.  Pesticides and herbicides have also been introduced, harming the soil.  The plants and crops grown reflect the soil it is planted in.  If the soil is depleted in vitamins and minerals, the plant will then also be deficient.  The reality is since 1940, the value of nutrition in vegetables has decreased by about 30-40%, even as high as 76% and in fruits has decreased in nutritional value by about 20%.  The natural foods we eat today are not the same that our ancestors ate centuries ago.

It is becoming grossly apparent we are deficient in the essential nutrients that we need.  We are seeing our own "scurvy" scourge with the numerous diseases and ailments we see today.  But it can be prevented.  We need to make better choices and eat more natural, nutrient rich foods. But the need of supplementing vitamins and minerals is growing and unavoidable.  I've not saying to take every little pill.  We must first get our nutrients by the foods we eat.  Afterwards, we must be aware of the nutrients we are more deficient in, to supplement them, that we may avoid any costly and harmful effects.  I wish I had more time to discuss more in depth of which vitamins to take, but I encourage everyone to make the small and simple steps of eating healthier and taking a good multi-vitamin.  There is a real need for Vitamins for us today