You Don't Need To Take Vitamins. You Get Enough Vitamins In The Food You Eat

No, no, no I don't actually believe that at all. However there are plenty of health professionals who've told me those very words. My own family members in particular. One is a doctor, the other a pharmacist.

So thats like saying that everyone gets an adequate vitamin supply regardless their diet. Even if it's a diet of diabetes-inducing junk food. I may not have any health and nutrition credentials, but I strongly disagree with this shit. I eat healthily, not as good as most people and I really need to reduce my cholestrol intake, but I still don't think my common food choices meet all my vitamin needs on a daily basis. Thus I think taking vitamins are actually beneficial for that reason alone. Your body can only metabolize so many vitamins at a time, so if you take in too much of any vitamin in a short length of time, you'll just piss it out. Yet I don't understand how some health professionals can actually believe this garbage and pass this on to their patients who trust them.

 

I believe most vitamins should come from a person's diet, but how many people eat a healthy diet that provides them with all the vitamins and minerals they need? The Standard American Diet is severely lacking in nutritional value, so I think vitamins can be of benefit to most people, granted they take a QUALITY vitamin and not Centrum Silver or something similar in quality. I myself do take vitamins, even though I eat very healthy. I do it to optimize my health, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary.

Even those who eat a healthy diet can be deficient in certain vitamins -- for instance vitamin D, which is lacking in most people, but especially those who live in northern regions where there is less sun.

Doctors for the most part do not know anything about nutrition, mainly because they are taught a bare minimum about it in school. At the same time, all the big medical journals, which are funded by big pharma, constantly poo poo vitamins as useless and even dangerous. It must be remembered that doctors serve to treat, not cure, ailments brought on by poor diet with drugs and surgery. That's what keeps the medical and pharmaceutical industry raking in the cash. They need a public that's chronically sick. Therefore it would make sense that those in the medical community would speak against the use of supplements. Not that doctors are part of any conspiracy, but they are very much brainwashed when it comes to such things and truly believe the lies they've been told.

 

Before vitamin supplements became readily available to our growing population, humans got along fine without them for tens of thousands of years.

Just sayin'.

 

If you have a good diet, and have a normal type life...taking vitamins just makes expensive piss.

 

if a vitamin is water soluble you're just going to piss out anything beyond what you need and if its fat soluable it is possible to take too much of certain vitamins...vitamin A comes to mind.

processed food is enriched with vitamins so even if you eat junk food all the time you wont be completely deficient.

but with that said I think it all depends on your diet. You could eat healthy and still be lacking in certain vitamins and minerals, depending on what kind of foods you commonly eat

 

The soil was not depleted then like it is now, so most food today has less nutritional value than it did, especially once you factor in that many fruits and vegetables have been genetically modified.

 

my cereal has enough vitamins ..

 

Enriched with the worst quality, often synthetic vitamins.

For instance milk is fortified with vitamin D, but it's D2, which is not handled well by the human body.

 

true, bit it served its purpose in the first half of the last century when many inner city immigrant families did not have access to fresh food. I dont really think its necessary to enrich processed food anymore

 

Yeah tell me about it. I come from a family of medical professionals who bought into the belief that GMOs will rid world hunger. I get that most people don't need to take vitamin pills every day to stay alive, however I do believe that taking the vitamins will certainly improve one's overall physical and mental health. And ever since I've stopped taking ADHD medication, I've been interested more and more in dietary and vitamin alternatives to improving my physical and mental condition. I'm a product designer/engineer and I never studied nutrition in school but I'm trying to learn more.

 

Life expectancy for a male in 1900 Britain was 47, for a woman 50.

 

But was that primarily due to lack of vitamins?

 

Some of it may have been. Conditions such as ricketts which is due to Vit D deficiency were common for instance.

Given what is now known about the role played by some vitamins in gene expression, and their role in preventing ageing, might suggest that bad diet did play a role. But of course it wasn't the only cause - many infectious illnesses thrived in that period..

 

I don't know, I sort of believe this. Emphasize the "sort of." I think most people in America eat way too much food, and if there diet is even remotely diverse, they shouldn't need to supplement. If they eat a reasonable diet of whole, unprocessed foods, they should never need to supplement (strange health anomalies aside).

 

What I've heard is that we are too sedentary to do this. If we were very active in our lifestyles then consuming the amount of food we need to get all the nutrients we need, wouldn't be a problem. With lifestyles as non-physical as they are we'd be too obese if we ate all the food needed to get the nutrients.

I think...

 

Trouble is a lot of people eat food that is in effect 'empty calories'. Not enough leafy greens, fresh veg and so on. Myself, I try to eat a good diet, but I also feel that taking supplementary vitamins as well as omega 3 oils can't do much harm and may do some good.

Exercise is essential though.

 

For the average person, if you eat healthy you only need moderate exercise and no supplements. That's my conviction. If you eat unhealthy or unhealthy amounts you do need to get more active.

 

I think it's down to many factors such as overall health and age. For example, a 70 year old makes 4 times less Vitamin D from sunlight than a 20 year old. I had a Vitamin D test about a year ago, and I was deficient in that vitamin. That could be partly because I have fair skin and so I tend to avoid exposure to the sun, but statistics estimate that nearly 70% of people who live above 37 degrees north are similarly deficient. And that could have some quite serious consequences.
It's not that most people are so deficient that they will get rickets or something similar, but lack of Vitamin D could lead to premature ageing due to telomere damage, problems with gene expression, lack of oxytocin in the brain and many other negative outcomes.

 

Well, when people are nearing age 70 and are sensitive to sun it is another situation. They're getting pretty old to be honest.

 

12 years until I hit 70 - so I think I'm justified in taking the nutrition thing more seriously than when I was a lad.

But who can say? Maybe if I'd focused more on this when I was younger I'd be in better shape now.