I read the faq and couldn’t find the answer to my questions.
What happens when you consume 10-20% of daily value in vitamins/minerals? Let’s say you’re only consuming 0mg-100mg of calcium each day for 5 years, does that mean your bones are getting significantly weaker?
How does the body function, when one day you consume 200% dv of calcium, and the next day 25% dv of calcium for let’s say 1 year? Does the body regulate and store enough calcium between days, to average out close to 100% daily value of calcium? Does this apply on a case-by-case basis to other vitamins and minerals?
I made an attempt to look for these questions online, but wasn’t able to find them. I appreciate all the answers. If you’re incapable of providing answers, I would also appreciate pointing me in the direction of reading material that may aid me in answering my questions.
you would get sick because of micronutrient deficiency with different symptoms depending on what you lack: https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/micronutrient-malnutrition/micronutrients/index.html
https://www.who.int/health-topics/micronutrients
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/micronutrients#types-and-functions
some vitamins are arw water soluble and are excrected with urine if they arwn‘t used, others are stored in fat.
Some vitamins are fat soluble and can be stored in the body in the fat. Others are water soluble and need to be consumed daily (can’t be stored; extra gets peed out). It’s optimal to consume 100% of the DV for each vitamin and mineral a day, but if some days you only consume 70% or whatever, that’s likely not going to cause much harm.
Harm would come if you only consumed small amounts (or none) of the vitamins and minerals you need on a longer term basis.
I recently read that a deficiency in folate can result in shredding of the DNA, making folate deficiency a carcinogen. That’s one example of the harm significantly less than optimal nutrition can cause. With that in mind, a daily multivitamin seems like a reasonable choice if one wasn’t confident they were getting enough vitamins and minerals from their diet.
Whole plant foods offer things like polyphenols and other plant-derived compounds like nourish the body and brain. There’s countless numbers of these wonderful, complex, interesting plant compounds that benefit us, and each unique plant has something unique to offer you
The daily values they recommend are based on lab studies. I’d take all those percentages with a grain of salt. Not to mention they don’t at all take into account how bio-available each nutrient is in certain foods. Aside from that in your example yes if you don’t get enough calcium from food your body will start using calcium that is in bones to ensure optimal cell function. Same with any other nutrient that the body cannot make.
What you eat in 1 day doesn’t matter as much as over the course of weeks/months/years. so just eat a good variety and it will cover most bases, fish, eggs, animal organs like liver, fruits & veg you’ll be golden