Advertisement.
Your daily vitamin might not be the insurance you think it is.
Are you aware of big vitamin scare going around the US and UK? The staid Reader's Digest even had a cover story, "The Vitamin Hoax: 10 not to take" Nov, 2007).
Worst case: some vitamins are harmful. Best case: they do, well, nothing. So says the Reader's Digest.Before you pop that next daily multi, check the bottle for two things:
1. Toxic ingredients.The scoop is in the 3-page white paper, Are You Wasting Your Money on Synthetic Vitamins? here. That's the reason Dr. Heidi finally designed a daily whole food multi, the Pops.
Artificial colors: FD&C Blue #2 Lake, FD&C Red 40, etc.
Preservatives: sorbates (eg, Polysorbate 80), benzoates (eg, sodium benzoate), nitrites (eg, sodium nitrite), sulphites (eg, sulphur dioxide)
2. Are they synthetic?
Look at the names of the vitamins and minerals in the “Ingredients” listing on the label of the bottle. (You may need a magnifying glass.) A vitamin or mineral is synthetic if only its chemical and/or popular name appears, with no plant source.E.g. from the label of a popular synthetic multivitamin seen on TV
Ingredients: Calcium Carbonate, Calcium Phosphate, Magnesium Oxide, Potassium Chloride, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), DL-tocopheryl acetate (Vitamin E), more here...ALL SYNTHETIC vitamins.
Your vitamins are not synthetic if they are listed with their whole food source. For example, “Vitamin C (from camucamu fruit)” indicates that you’re getting the Vitamin C, along with the other nutrients it lives with in the whole fruit. Not just the isolated vitamin C made in a lab.
If you want a daily multi that is whole-food based, with no toxins or synthetic vitamins, go here and get some. They're not a drug, so give them a few months to test them.Regardless of whether you get the whole food multis designed by Dr. Heidi or not (I've taken them for three years) please throw out any synthetic vitamins that might be doing you more harm than good.
If you HATE to pay shipping like I do, check the 4 month (4 boxes) "subscription" option, and you don't pay shipping.
2 comments:
It is not true that a vitamin listed by its chemical name is synthetic.
That may just mean that the vitamin has been analyzed to find the quantity of the actual vitamin that is in the extract from the natural source.
The carton for major multi-vitamins would not be large enough to contain the list of natural sources for all the vitamins included.
It is unfair to make up a rule no one else recognizes and hold all other vitamin companies to that non-universal rule.
Sue
Sue,
You write: "It is not true that a vitamin listed by its chemical name is synthetic"
That depends on how one defines synthetic. By synthetic we refer to the isolated form of the vitamin, away from its natural environment. Doesn't matter even if the vitamin was in the plant once, or created entirely in the lab. It's away from its natural environment of other nutrients and cofactors that are necessary for the body to absorb it, without side effects. That's what we mean by synthetic.
As to "natural sources" that word has become almost meaningless and sometime even misleading. Did you know that today, "natural flavors" is a euphemism for MSG!
The meaning of natural sources, flavors and ingredients can be whatever someone wants to make it since there are no agreed upon definitions.
Scientists and medical researchers do recognize the distinction between synthetic and whole-food vitamins, because one is isolated and harder to absorb (the reason for all the negative press about vitamins of late) and the other comes with the co-factors it lives with in the plant, which seem to be necessary for maximum absorption.
Hope that helps a little. Thanks for your comment.
Post a Comment