Bad Synthetic Vitamins?

Who else takes bad synthetic vitamins daily and doesn't know it?

Readers here know I'm an extreme health and fitness nut. So much that I became part owner of a little company that markets a whole food daily supplement - the Pops.

We are one of just two or three whole food daily vitamins on the market.
The hundreds of other daily vitamins are synthetic.

Dr. Heidi, the designer of the whole food vitamin I market, has laid out the case about the badness of synthetic vitamins in one of the most viral white papers on whole food vitamins online. A revealing chart which identifies synthetic from real food source vitamins included.

But since we sell a product, of course, her (and my) words are suspect. No matter that Dr. Heidi created it because she was aghast at the dangers of synthetic vitamins. She figured she'd design her own and have a good, safe whole food daily vitamin for herself and HER family. (Which has now grown quite big.)

Anyway, I reported some of the recent negative research results on daily vitamins and got much criticism from folks in the NM business who sell vitamins. (See comments there.)

My answer then and now: the studies dumping on vitamins refer to synthetic vitamins. What do you care if the findings are negative? What do you expect from synthetic vitamins? Use whole food source ones and you're fine!

Dr. Heidi's not the only one who has pointed out the long term dangers of synthetic vitamins - which comprise 95%+ of what's on all store shelves in the U.S. today.

Here's another voice speaking out the bad synthetic vitamins.

Very similar to Dr. Heidi's Are Your Vitamins Safe white paper. Some highlights from the new site:

"In one experiment, synthetic vitamin B (thiamine) was shown to render 100% of a group of pigs sterile!"

...Natural food-source vitamins are enzymatically alive. Man-made synthetic vitamins are dead chemicals."

"This is what occurs with all synthetic vitamins: the body treats them as toxins, leading to the "expensive urine" of excess vitamin intake referred to frequently, since the human system via the urinary tract attempts to rid itself of the major quantity of such foreign chemicals."

They even have a similar chart to Dr. Heidi's so you can tell which vitamins in your current bottle is synthetic or whole food based. More here.

Anyway, here's what I take. Now you know why and why I do my best to find people who take daily vitamins, only don't realize they're synthetic. We even let them test the Pops first. Why not, right?

There are a few other options, but since I use this one, this is what I market.

Why would anyone take synthetic vitamins if they knew they could be doing more harm than good?

UPDATE: Here's from Dr. Mercola making the same distinction between bad synthetic and whole food source vitamins (he makes you subscribe but you can unsub if ya want.) Thanks, Karen Floyd!

P.S. The issue is not "natural" versus synthetic. It's whole-food based versus synthetic. Natural sounds good, but here's the problem: they can take something from a natural source, like a plant or fruit, and do anything to it they want and still call it natural. For example, they can add artificial additives like food coloring, or heat it so the enzymes are dead, or toxify it. And still call it natural.

That's why 'natural' is meaningless.

A 'natural' product does NOT protect you. It's not for nothing we're a nation of sick, tired and overweight people. We trust the establishment too much and are too busy to get to the bottom of anything other than what's near and dear to us. And this happens to be near and dear to me.