Can We Get Enough Nutrients From Food Alone? (September 16, 2014)
Almost everyone I know takes at least one vitamin, mineral or other nutritional supplement. We have a general sense that we aren't getting enough out of the food we normally eat, even if we aren’t always clear on the specifics. I’d say that that feeling is correct, AND I'd take it a step further and say that not only are most people’s diets inadequate, but that in practical terms it’s not even possible to get all the nutrients we need from what we normally eat.
About 25 years ago my father mailed me an article he’d clipped from Prevention magazine. I don’t remember anything about that particular article but I do remember what was on the reverse side of it very clearly. It was a brief writeup by Prevention's then-editor describing her personal attempt to answer a question that at that time was still very controversial – is it possible to get all the nutrients we need from food? She sat down with nutrition charts and pen and paper, and tried to see if she could plan out a single day's worth of food that not only included adequate amounts of all the nutrients essential to health but also totaled a workable number of calories. To accomplish this she deliberately chose foods that were high in several nutrients in order to get more bang for her calorie buck (so to speak) – with that in mind, she even chose clams as her protein source! With all this, she still was unable to design a meal plan with fewer than about 1700 calories, and that was for a day full of “superfoods” that didn’t include a single questionable item. Her reluctant conclusion was that it’s really not possible to get all your nutrients from food.
But that sounds pretty weird. Cavemen didn’t have Centrum Silver or Shaklee. How could this even be possible?
To begin with, like popular music and auto mechanics, food just ain’t what it used to be. The varieties of grains, fruits and vegetables that are commonly grown these days were chosen for traits other than the amount of nutrition they provide. Consequently there has been a drop of about 15% in the nutrient content of fruits and vegetables and 30%-50% in the protein content of wheat since the 1930s. Industrialized agriculture (particularly the application of fertilizers and other methods used to maximum crop yield) also tends to result in less protein, vitamins and minerals in the final products. (So if you can eat more organic, naturally grown and local foods, that would be of at least some assistance.)
Another reason is that people eat a lot less than they used to. Really! We consume only about half the calories that an average person did at the beginning of the 20th century. People do need fewer calories as their activity drops, but along with fewer calories we consequently take in fewer of the other important nutrients that naturally accompany those calories as well. When you figure that the average American is consuming around 2000 calories per day, with 500 calories of that being sugar and the other 1500 mostly not anything to get excited about nutritionally, I have to say that supplemental nutrition seems like a foregone conclusion.
So the next question is, how SHOULD we be supplementing our diets? Here are a few ideas.
There are seven nutrients that are commonly found to be deficient in Americans. They are (not in any particular order): calcium, potassium, magnesium, vitamin D, iron, folate/folic acid, and fiber. That list shows up clearly the biggest single problem we have in our eating habits – not enough fruits and veggies. Nine servings a day of fruits and vegetables is ideal. If we can even manage the old recommendation of five servings per day (right now the average is less than two), that would be a big step toward rectifying most of those deficiencies. (In particular, dark green veggies and whole grains -- we only eat about 10% of the quantity of those foods that are currently recommended.)
Certain demographic groups have a tendency toward specific deficiencies. Pre-menopausal women tend to be low in iron. Vegans and the elderly tend to be low in vitamin B12. And so forth. For that reason, another useful idea is to find a highly-rated multivitamin targeted to one’s demographic group and take that five or six days a week.
If you yourself are deficient in anything, of course, that’s your first priority. Vitamin D is profoundly important, its lack is implicated in more different medical problems all the time -- and somewhere around 50% of Americans are judged to be deficient in it. Unless you already know your vitamin D status it would be a good idea to get it measured the next time your blood needs to be tested for anything. As for other nutrients, you should of course take action if any are found to be low on a standard blood panel. But I am not sure about the specialty blood and hair testing that is done so frequently these days by many alternative practitioners. My own feeling is that if you are generally healthy and don’t have a particular problem that is amenable to nutritional supplementation, you’re probably better off just taking general corrective steps like the ones I'm describing here.
You can sometimes throw your body off by over-supplementing an individual nutrient, and we are far from being experts yet on every nutrient that is required for health. So therefore my final recommendation would be to find some kind of whole-food supplement that appeals to you. These are just very nutrient-dense whole foods that you eat a little bit of daily as a sort of nutritional backstop. Brewer’s yeast was a popular one twenty-plus or so years ago. Blue green algae was one that's a little more recent. Moringa leaf powder (of which I personally am a great fan) is one of the current ones. You could also take a green powder, or maybe freshly juice a glass of fresh fruits and/or vegetables a couple few times a week.
None of these suggestions will get you into any trouble. Very few of us are eating enough of the right foods to be properly nourished, so I hope you find at least one of these ideas useful.
--dr. diane holmes, D.C., L.Ac., M.A.O.M.
Copyright © 2014
Almost everyone I know takes at least one vitamin, mineral or other nutritional supplement. We have a general sense that we aren't getting enough out of the food we normally eat, even if we aren’t always clear on the specifics. I’d say that that feeling is correct, AND I'd take it a step further and say that not only are most people’s diets inadequate, but that in practical terms it’s not even possible to get all the nutrients we need from what we normally eat.
About 25 years ago my father mailed me an article he’d clipped from Prevention magazine. I don’t remember anything about that particular article but I do remember what was on the reverse side of it very clearly. It was a brief writeup by Prevention's then-editor describing her personal attempt to answer a question that at that time was still very controversial – is it possible to get all the nutrients we need from food? She sat down with nutrition charts and pen and paper, and tried to see if she could plan out a single day's worth of food that not only included adequate amounts of all the nutrients essential to health but also totaled a workable number of calories. To accomplish this she deliberately chose foods that were high in several nutrients in order to get more bang for her calorie buck (so to speak) – with that in mind, she even chose clams as her protein source! With all this, she still was unable to design a meal plan with fewer than about 1700 calories, and that was for a day full of “superfoods” that didn’t include a single questionable item. Her reluctant conclusion was that it’s really not possible to get all your nutrients from food.
But that sounds pretty weird. Cavemen didn’t have Centrum Silver or Shaklee. How could this even be possible?
To begin with, like popular music and auto mechanics, food just ain’t what it used to be. The varieties of grains, fruits and vegetables that are commonly grown these days were chosen for traits other than the amount of nutrition they provide. Consequently there has been a drop of about 15% in the nutrient content of fruits and vegetables and 30%-50% in the protein content of wheat since the 1930s. Industrialized agriculture (particularly the application of fertilizers and other methods used to maximum crop yield) also tends to result in less protein, vitamins and minerals in the final products. (So if you can eat more organic, naturally grown and local foods, that would be of at least some assistance.)
Another reason is that people eat a lot less than they used to. Really! We consume only about half the calories that an average person did at the beginning of the 20th century. People do need fewer calories as their activity drops, but along with fewer calories we consequently take in fewer of the other important nutrients that naturally accompany those calories as well. When you figure that the average American is consuming around 2000 calories per day, with 500 calories of that being sugar and the other 1500 mostly not anything to get excited about nutritionally, I have to say that supplemental nutrition seems like a foregone conclusion.
So the next question is, how SHOULD we be supplementing our diets? Here are a few ideas.
There are seven nutrients that are commonly found to be deficient in Americans. They are (not in any particular order): calcium, potassium, magnesium, vitamin D, iron, folate/folic acid, and fiber. That list shows up clearly the biggest single problem we have in our eating habits – not enough fruits and veggies. Nine servings a day of fruits and vegetables is ideal. If we can even manage the old recommendation of five servings per day (right now the average is less than two), that would be a big step toward rectifying most of those deficiencies. (In particular, dark green veggies and whole grains -- we only eat about 10% of the quantity of those foods that are currently recommended.)
Certain demographic groups have a tendency toward specific deficiencies. Pre-menopausal women tend to be low in iron. Vegans and the elderly tend to be low in vitamin B12. And so forth. For that reason, another useful idea is to find a highly-rated multivitamin targeted to one’s demographic group and take that five or six days a week.
If you yourself are deficient in anything, of course, that’s your first priority. Vitamin D is profoundly important, its lack is implicated in more different medical problems all the time -- and somewhere around 50% of Americans are judged to be deficient in it. Unless you already know your vitamin D status it would be a good idea to get it measured the next time your blood needs to be tested for anything. As for other nutrients, you should of course take action if any are found to be low on a standard blood panel. But I am not sure about the specialty blood and hair testing that is done so frequently these days by many alternative practitioners. My own feeling is that if you are generally healthy and don’t have a particular problem that is amenable to nutritional supplementation, you’re probably better off just taking general corrective steps like the ones I'm describing here.
You can sometimes throw your body off by over-supplementing an individual nutrient, and we are far from being experts yet on every nutrient that is required for health. So therefore my final recommendation would be to find some kind of whole-food supplement that appeals to you. These are just very nutrient-dense whole foods that you eat a little bit of daily as a sort of nutritional backstop. Brewer’s yeast was a popular one twenty-plus or so years ago. Blue green algae was one that's a little more recent. Moringa leaf powder (of which I personally am a great fan) is one of the current ones. You could also take a green powder, or maybe freshly juice a glass of fresh fruits and/or vegetables a couple few times a week.
None of these suggestions will get you into any trouble. Very few of us are eating enough of the right foods to be properly nourished, so I hope you find at least one of these ideas useful.
--dr. diane holmes, D.C., L.Ac., M.A.O.M.
Copyright © 2014