Excerpt from Mercola.com
In my opinion, if you shop for your supplements at discount stores you may be seriously shortchanging yourself because those products typically use cheap synthetic isolates.
Millions gorge themselves on synthetic vitamins, only to acquire and die from degenerative diseases.
You see, isolated vitamins are partial vitamins, combined with other chemicals. They’re a low-end alternative to whole, real complete food.
When you remove a part from the whole, you get ‘Synthetic,’ ‘Isolated,’ or ‘Fractionated’ pieces of the whole, but it’s simply not the same.
There are four problems with synthetic vitamins…
1.Nature intended for you to consume food in WHOLE form because all the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and enzymes are together in one package. They work synergistically to give your body the nutrition it requires for optimal health.
2.Your body only absorbs a small percentage of an isolate form of vitamins and minerals – and it utilizes even less. You get the best bioavailability in whole food form.
3.Synthetic vitamins often give you massive quantities of some nutrients (usually the most inexpensive ones) and insufficient quantities of others, not balance.
4.You can experience side effects of synthetic isolates from the additives and the unnatural state of the synthetic supplement.
You’ve heard me say it before… Fast food and a sedentary lifestyle can be a disaster for your health.
Don’t let your multivitamin add to the collateral damage.
In fact, you want to be sure it makes a real and significant contribution to your health, especially if you’ve already adopted healthy lifestyle practices…..
Why Not Just Eat All-Natural Whole Foods?
So, in recommending a high-quality multivitamin, please remember that these nutritional supplements complement the food you eat. They do not take the place of a healthful diet of unprocessed organic foods, which I believe is still the best physical factor for you to achieve optimal nutrition.
However, accessing and eating high quality foods regularly may be a personal challenge for you and your family. Your busy schedule may lead you to cook healthy whole food less than you know you should — and eat “fast food” more.
Even if you do well with your diet choices, another factor involves the actual food supply itself.
Up to 50% of the Nutrient Value of Your Food May be Lost from the Start
A number of carefully controlled studies have provided startling evidence that by the time the food reaches your table, serious nutrient content could already be lost.
Some estimates report the nutrient value lost at over 50%!
This is largely the result of conventional farming methods that rely heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which deplete the soil of nutrients… nutrients that must be absorbed by plants in order to be passed on to you.
And it does not necessarily end there.
In many cases, it’s likely you unknowingly further deplete the nutrients in your food — just by the way you prepare it. For most food, cooking it will seriously impair its nutritional value.
So, realizing that you cannot always obtain the whole unprocessed foods you need — and knowing how easy it is for valuable nutrients to be destroyed — you now know why I believe adding a good multivitamin to complement your diet is a sound move.