[removed]
Post removed. This subreddit does not allow front page posts which are personal situations or diet evaluations. You must use the comments section of the weekly post instead.
Asking for individualized recommendations about supplements for yourself or someone else is requesting medical advice (impermissible) and needs to be sought from a qualified medical professional.
Eating several servings of fruit & vegetables each day >>>>> daily multivitamin >>>>> neither.
But if you think you have a deficiency go see your doc to get bloodwork (iron def is common) to be put on supplements.
The trick is in eating a variety of nutrient-dense foods and supplementing anything you can’t otherwise get from the diet. So, it all depends.
Commonly useful vitamins due to widespread deficiencies are B12, Zinc, Magnesium, Vitamin D. Sometimes iron and calcium as well.
You definitely shouldn’t be trying to out supplement a poor diet; that’s not what supplements are meant to do. We get more nutrients from food than we do from supplementation, so improving your diet is definitely the key.
Ideally none of them.
Supplements are ok for single things you struggle with but they will usually miss some of the important micros (like lipids & aminos) and won’t have the full range of molecules for all the nutrients it does include. Minerals they are generally ok on but vitamins are more complex as they usually have multiple types of the same vitamin (eg B12 has 4, good vitamin supplements will maybe contain 2 of those). Some nutrients are difficult to synthesize/extract so food is the only source for them.
Similar problem if your diet doesn’t contain much variety. It’s not expensive or difficult to get enough variety.
Supplements are meant to fill in nutrient gaps. They’re not meant to replace food in a nutrient poor diet, as the others have said.
Some people will require specific nutrients due to a few examples like these: increased needs — such as in pregnancy and breastfeeding, deficiency — such as with iron or for someone who is home bound and not getting vit D, or potential for malabsorption such as some gastric related surgeries; b12 for someone following a vegan diet. Often a doctor is advising/prescribing for situations like this.
But if it’s just the diet is of poor quality, you would do better to focus on improving that first.
Moreover, adding nutrient rich foods such as plant proteins — beans, lentils, nuts, seeds; fruits & veg; calcium rich foods; iron rich foods not only gives you a single nutrient but multiple nutrients.
For instance, the canned pumpkin I froze to make my pumpkin spice smoothie this morning contains vit A, C, iron, and potassium. The milk I blended it with has calcium, phosphorus, vit D, and potassium. The spinach that I will incorporate into my lunch entree contains calcium, iron, vit A, and potassium.
Not to mention the fiber in many of these foods. Important for gut and heart health and shown to decrease risk of certain chronic conditions. Something greatly lacking in the Standard American Diet (SAD) where only 5-10% of the population are meeting the recommended fiber requirements.
In addition, these foods contain a myriad of phytonutrients — naturally occurring compounds in plant foods, for example like carotenoids, lycopene, and flavonoids which have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant effects.
If after working in improving your diet, you feel as though you still have gaps or just have general concerns about deficiencies due to your medical history or unique needs, you should speak to a doctor.