Whole food supplements have all the nutrients that you get from concentrated and dehydrated whole foods. We use only the best from an organic farm.
SUPPLEMENTS: IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?
When nutrient parts or manufactured imitations are used, numerous problems exist.
Here are some of them:
- A part or imitation may be a different chemical from the natural, food form.
- A part or imitation may have a different “optical structure” from the natural form. It can be a mirror image in its chemical structure, like trying to put a right-handed glove on your left hand.
- It may have the same formula as fat as molecules go, but it will be different in its physical and chemical properties. It won’t function in the same way. For example, some vitamins (like many of the B vitamins on the market) are made of coal tar. Yes, tar obtained by distilling coal which is a commonly used for dyes, drugs, and other industrial items that have absolutely no relationship to foods. The coal tar can be constructed into a formula that duplicates one nutrient part, like a B vitamin, but it is a far cry from the real food complex. Maybe cockroaches, supposedly able to eat anything, could live on coal tar chemicals, but humans can’t.
- It will be only one member of a large group of variously-structured compounds that all need to work together for optimal nutritional effects.
- Using the process of synthesis - forming copies of separate nutrients in a laboratory - means not only is the nutrient a fake imitation, but there is also the possibility of contamination from other chemicals.
- Taking large amounts of one isolated nutrient separated from a group or complex often inhibits absorption of other group members or other nutrients. Synthetic (manufactured from non-food sources) and isolated (chemically extracted from food or other source) vitamins are not absorbed, assimilated, and used as effectively as nutrients in their natural, complex state (real food). Minerals extracted from rocks, soil, coral, or other non-food sources are also not used in the body as well as minerals from foods.
- Large amounts of a single, separated nutrient can increase or mask the need for other nutrients.
- Taking large amounts of a nutrient part or imitation can displace other nutrients that normally accompany it in real foods. In other words, you end up creating deficiencies of members of the nutrient group that have been left out. For example, taking large amounts of ascorbic acid (often called "vitamin C") can create deficits of copper, rutin, and/or flavonoids - natural associates of ascorbic acid in real foods.
- A nutrient is normally and naturally a group of substances, a complex, network, ensemble - a package of ingredients all working together. lt is never isolated in Nature. It is never a single thing. "Pure" vitamin C - aka ascorbic add - is fabricated from refined com syrup or sugar, not from whole food. It's about as far away from being a food as you can get. It is isolated, devoid of the active, synergistic coworkers inherent in real foods. It can't support life because it is a chemical with no food value. Chemicals are not, and never have been, alive.
- Nutrients require other nutrients to be activated, balanced, operative, and nourishing. The "chemically - pure" vitamin (a part), for example, has its biological activity (function) destroyed. The "elemental" mineral - one from a non-food source like calcium from rock - cannot be used in the body like one that has been prepared by plants for use as food. Minerals from broccoli or cheese have been prepared by the broccoli plant or cow so we can use them as nutrients, as food. Eating rocks or pieces of coral to get calcium will hardly have the same effect. They are not human foods. In driving home the point, I would not consider suggesting that you obtain your trace mineral chromium by licking your chrome bathroom fixtures. And I hope you would not consider doing so.
- Scientists know a lot about the substances in real foods, but they certainly don't yet know all the substances that exist in foods. They continue to discover new (to them) nutrients and substances all the time. This means that, unless you are taking real food concentrates as supplements, you are not getting everything you need. You're being cheated. And your body knows.
- The more a food is purified or a vitamin complex is purified or artificially copied, the less nutritious it becomes.
- No one knows exactly what amounts and what mixtures of separated nutrients are best for health. Further, no one knows what amounts of mixtures of separated nutrients are best for you as a unique individual. Foods and food concentrates allow your body to choose what it needs in the amounts it needs at that particular time (it's called selective absorption).
- Separated and/or synthetic nutrients create imbalances in your biochemistry. Attempts to "maximize" (single-out or imitate) one component from a food affects the accumulation or reduction of other components in your body. Taking large amounts of even several separated components can still result in "unexpected metabolic interactions within the body." In other words, while you're trying to correct one deficiency, you may be creating more problems in other areas of your biochemistry and body. Imbalances can be worse than deficiencies.
- Individual vitamins or other isolated nutrients have pharmacological, drug-like, actions and will stimulate or suppress some segment of metabolism or a biochemical reaction. Thus, even though taking an isolated nutrient may reduce or create symptoms, it is not feeding the body's cells as do real foods and nor truly improving health to its optimum level. Only whole foods and whole food supplements can accomplish this. You can't fool Nature.
- Separated, non-food, or artificially-copied nutrients, particularly if taken in large doses or for a long period of time, can create side effects. This is because the body does not recognize them as "food" and cannot use them as true nourishment, as natural nutrient complexes or networks. In fact, isolated or synthetic vitamins create what has been called "expensive urine" - the body dumps most of what has been taken in. This is because the body doesn't know the chemicals as food and treats them as alien, as toxins. As much of the chemicals as possible is rushed through the bloodstream to the kidneys where they are excreted. Not so with real food. The body knows it's food, takes from it all the nutrient it needs and can get, then excretes only the leftovers and fiber.