A Vitamin and Mineral Supplement for a Greener Lifestyle Askam-in-Furness

Why Take a Good Vitamin and Mineral Supplement?

Is it worth taking vitamin and mineral supplements?

We all know vitamins and minerals are good for us.

But we get them in our food - right?

So why go to the trouble and expense of buying supplements?

Isn't this just pouring money down the drain?

This page gives a few very good reasons for taking supplements as a regular part of your health care programme. There's also a brief guide to what to look for in a good supplement.

Here's why taking a supplement is a good idea

A vitamin and mineral supplement as part of your daily routine is a good idea for the simple reason that you get a degree of health insurance. Many diseases are partly caused by dietary inadequacies. These may not be easily noticed.

You can be sticking to good diet and eating mainly things which are from the mainfood groups, in the right proportions and yet you can still# be deficient in vitamins and minerals.

How can this happen? There are several reasons. The first concerns farming.

Modern farming methods

Modern farming practices don’t put everything back into the soil that is taken out. Only the main nutrients needed for plant growth are applied to the soil. Nitrogen, Potassium and Sodium (NPK) are present in fertilisers but very often many important trace elements and minerals are completely or largely absent.

This means that the soil becomes ever more depleted and the plants which grow there, even though they look robust and healthy, are seriously lacking in some of the nutritional qualities which we need. Calcium and zinc are two very important minerals which are often deficient in the soil because of modern farming practices.

Also, many plants are grown very intensively, using hydroponics and do not even have access to real soil. This means that they are dependent upon the proper nutrients arriving at the right time.

Although hydroponic growers are becoming more sophisticated in their techniques, they still cannot fully reproduce the natural processes of plant growth. Many hydroponic growers do now pay a lot of attention to plant nutrition and some even use organic feeds. Nevertheless, replicating the huge diversity found in natural conditions is a difficult task.

Transportation and delay

Another reason we don't always get what we need from our food is that it has lost vitamins while being transported and while sitting on supermarket shelves. Some vitamins simply do not keep well. As soon as the crop is cut, the process of depletion starts. This is particularly true for vitamin C.

The process continues in the kitchen even if food is in a fridge, and then when we cook the food, more losses occur.

Lifestyle choices

Modern lifestyle choices also affect our need for vitamins. For example, if you live in an area where traffic pollution is bad, (perhaps not your choice!) you will have a greater need for vitamins and minerals than if you didn't.

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