I’ve heard often that supplements and vitamins generally don’t work well, especially compared to getting the same thing in its natural form through food. But lots of food (cereal, milk, juice, etc) is fortified, which as far as I can tell is just mixing in a vitamin with the food as it’s made.
Fortified milk managed make Rickets an uncommon disease in the U.S. It appears that adding vitamins D and A to milk works pretty well.
Fortified food is a public health policy meant to prevent nutrient dependencies in the general population. It is simply a means to ensure people, particularly children get a healthy dose of micronutrients.
The distinction between foods and supplements in general is arbitrary. Coffee is a plant extract, like a supplement. Salt is an isolated mineral, like a supplement. Flour is an isolated macronutrient, like a protein supplement.
>I’ve heard often that supplements and vitamins generally don’t work well, especially compared to getting the same thing in its natural form through food.
This is a narrative that is really common nowadays that is based on a bit of confusion between nutritional science and public health advocacy.
If you talk to anyone in those fields, they’ll tell you that getting vitamins and minerals in just about any form is great, but that they’d rather recommend people learn how to eat a “balanced diet” of foods that naturally contain these molecules because it’s often cheaper and more sustainable over time, not because it’s really any less healthy other than small differences in absorption.
The problem with this advice, though, is that many of the people making these recommendations are, to put it nicely, quite out of touch with how many people live. Many, many people don’t have access to fresh food, or more importantly, the time that’s required to prepare it. Or, even more likely, are so exhausted after working for hours and hours that they don’t want to take the time to prepare healthy food. This is not laziness (as so many people looking down their noses imply), but rather a problem that’s bigger than any individual and more about how our society forces so many people to essentially work all the time.
Sorry to rant, but this is something that’s kind of close to my heart.
Anyways, this is all to say that if you find that a food product that happens to be fortified, that doesn’t mean that it’s really any less valuable to your body than a food that contains those molecules naturally.
I think there’s a few possible reasons:
Some vitamins and minerals require others or to be eaten with fat to be absorbed depending on which ones.
Supplements aren’t regulated the way food is, so it’s often hard to know if what the company says in the vitamin is in there, or in there in the specified quantities.
There’s also more to be gained from foods, more variety of vitamins and minerals than just taking perhaps one or a few in isolation.
Having said that some vitamin supplements are still useful under certain circumstances.
I was low in B12 (yes I eat meat and dairy) and was prescribed B12, just as an example.
I’ve personally been through that very long process of trying to get my nutrients through food. It’s time consuming to research what foods provide the nutrients you need or should get, and equally time consuming to shop and find ways to incorporate those into daily meals, not to mention cost or waste from buying fresh as a result. I’ve resisted supplements for a long time, opting for a good diet and moderate exercise, and when my health wasn’t improving, decided I had no choice. It was the best thing I ever did for myself.
I do want to note that I routinely skip breakfast (apparently I was “fasting”) or eat a light continental one occasionally, so that may have impacted, but I stick to a good multivitamin and that seems to work.
critics of fortified foods/ supplemental multivitamins generally appeal to the naturalistic fallacy, where everything natural is good and everything synthetic is bad. as long as you take ur vitamins with a meal to maximise intestinal transit time, a vitamin/mineral from a supplement is identical to those found in fruits and veg (with some small and negligible differences like d and dl alpha tocopherols, for eg)
the reason why you cant eat cheetos and hot pockets with fortified with multivites however is that fruits and veg have other nutrients other than vitamins and minerals. Fibre is a big one, along with things like phytonutrients and bioflavonoids.
Im cognizant of how certain studies have alleged that multivites are useless, like the oft cited physicians health study 2. The problem with those studies is that they administer nutrients in isolation. they give participants 1 or 2 types of vitamins along with no minerals and expect it to work wonders, when its generally accepted that nutrition is a chorus rather than a solo. Broad based supplementation is the way to go, something that seems to be lost on the designers of the study.
Not any different, really.
Only difference is that you cannot choose your dosage and type of vitamin. But it’s still a supplement.
Besides, if you hear anyone saying that sUpPlEmeNt aNd ViTamIns dOn’T WorK you can immediately stop listening to what they are saying because they clearly don’t know what they are talking about.
Also note that some nutrients don’t necessarily come with the source you consume either… e.g., “B12” ONLY comes from meat isn’t even true. Livestock are FED Vitamin B12 FORTIFIED feed in order to get their B12… which we then “need to consume” to get b12
Damn y’all are getting so worked up over vitamins, kinda crazy. Only way to figure this out for certain would be to test your levels while switching from fortified foods, to vitamins, an solely food based. As human body’s tend to differ a bit in how we process things.The soil being used an abused over the years an often poor conditions for animals may lead to less nutrients then we would’ve gotten in the past. So it’s hard for most people to get everything from food. Although if you eat a lot an get very high quality fresh foods, it could be possible. Not certain but even in that case it might be highly unlikely unless you’re rich or genetically lucky.