The Lowdown on Supplements
The question I often receive is: If I’m eating well and exercising and living relatively clean then I am getting enough vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, right?
The issue really is about living in the modern world more than anything else. Let’s understand that everyday we are bombarded by stressors from our iphones, wifi networks, degrading plastics in our drinking water, chemical cleaners in our shampoo and on our counter tops, pesticides, and car emissions just to name a few! Even healthy stressors exist such as exercise and coffee. All of these stressors increase our body’s needs for nutrients.
To make matters a bit more complex we need to look at modern agriculture. The truth is that our modern food does not have the same nutrient density as the wild counterpart that generations back once had. Due to farming techniques and fertilizers, most soils are now depleted of the wide array of important minerals such as magnesium, zinc, and other microminerals. Some studies show, and I agree, that organically grown produce is more nutrient dense than conventional. Especially if you are getting this organic produce from a small farm devoted to the health of their soil. This is because without the sprays to protect plants from the elements, they have to protect themselves, and nutrients are there way of doing this.
We also do not eat the same wide variety of plants that our ancestors did. It is estimated that they ate .... not only are we not eating the same wide variety of plant foods, but we have traded those in for processed and refined foods that are devoid of even more nutrients. The modern foods that are ubiquitous such as muffins, bagels, pizza, pasta and cereals also spike our blood sugar and cause our body to pull nutrients out of where it can to compensate.
As for animal products, unless you are buying grass fed-grass finished or chicken that eats bugs out of the ground then the nutrients in their products are lower in omega 3(anti-inflammatory) and higher in omega 6(inflammatory). Humans are designed to consume omega 3: omega 6 in a ratio of close to 1:2 but today many people consume 1:30! Now do you question your need for omega 3 supplementation?
We also do not eat with the seasons as we did for 99.9% of human history. We are designed to eat fruit only in season. Many fruits have to be stored in large warehouses to be available year around. Apples for example, are picked unripe, let sit, and then are gases with 1-methylcyclopropene to bring them to color and softness after 10 months.
We have scaled our diet down even more and cut out many foods that provide essential nutrients. Most Westerners no longer eat organ meats, bone marrow, cartiledge, gelatin, collagen or a wide range of shell fish. These foods provide some of the greatest sources of nutrients especially fat soluble ones.
An argument often brough up is that our ancestors did not take supplements. This is actually not true, they just not in the same pill form that we are used to seeing today. They ate dirt, bugs, ground up leaves, stems, roots and oil extracts all for the purpose of obtaining certain nutrients and compounds that their regular diet wasn’t providing. Animals today in the wild and even your dog can be seen eating certain plants when their body is out of balance.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073497500600022X
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/what-they-do-to-food-20120608-201su.html
