Do we really need vitamins if we eat whole foods?

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  • fteale
    fteale Posts: 5,310 Member
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    I think there's a lot of misinformation on both sides of this. Foods these days, grown with intensive farming, without fields having fallow years etc, have way less nutrients than they did in the past, even 100 years ago. So on the one hand you can be short of vitamins, even if you think you are eating all the right things.

    On the other hand, people don't die of not having them, so clearly they aren't essential. I think if you grow your own food on good soil, you are getting everything you need. A lot depends on the soil composition where your food is grown.

    I take vitamins as a precaution more than anything else. I started when I was trying for my first baby, as you need a lot more of most things when pregnant, and haven't got out of the habit, really.
  • WifeMomDVM
    WifeMomDVM Posts: 1,025 Member
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    I'm in the camp that I believe you should take a multi-vitamin - even with a clean diet. As another poster said, alot is lost from farm to table (unfortunately)

    Watch the documentary (free on Neftlix) "Food Matters". It talks alot about vitamin supplements and how safe they are and how much misleading information is out there.
  • koosdel
    koosdel Posts: 3,317 Member
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    No.

    TV rots the brain, apparently.
  • cramernh
    cramernh Posts: 3,335 Member
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    If so, what vitamins do we need? Opinions?

    There are some prescription medications that actually do require an additional vitamin or supplement because of opposite reactions. That can be determined by the prescribing provider who is giving you said-medication. Im on a particular diuretic/blood pressure pill that can deplete my potassium and calcium levels, so I have been instructed to take a type of calcium product and a type of Vit D product in conjunction with eating fresh healthy vegetables, which Ive already been doing anyway.

    I believe your PCP should be the one to determine whether or not taking anything OTC is right in an individual's situation.
  • woou
    woou Posts: 668 Member
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    Without my multi, I used to be hungry all the time, although I was eatting what I considered a whole. nonprocessed, balance diet.
  • Silverkittycat
    Silverkittycat Posts: 1,997 Member
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    If so, what vitamins do we need? Opinions?

    Only if you're lacking a specific vitamin or mineral. An annual visit to the doctor, get your blood done. If you're feeling "off" get it done again. Guessing and wondering about it is added stress/ anxiety that I'd rather do without. IMO a simple blood test is well worth the investment.
  • CenlaCoach
    CenlaCoach Posts: 28
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    I used to think that multivitamin wasnt necessary and there was a lot of hype to get people to buy them. Through my own research and experiences I dont think that way any more. Like others have said dont go somewhere and buy the cheap brands because of bioavailability.
    Dont think just because your a vegetarian that you need calcium. You can get more calcium per serving of broccoli than from milk. I am not a vegetarian but I have pretty much taken dairy out of my diet. The key is variety and balanced eating. Just because your eating healthy doesnt mean your eating balanced.
    Now I try to eat pretty healthy, I drink shakeology (made from 70 whole food ingredients) to help fill in the gaps most of my nutrition. I still take a good vitamin pack because of my workouts and activity levels. If your active, an athlete, or working out extremely hard for 5-6 days a week then your body probably needs the extra to help repair itself. If your not very active then you may not need to do the extra things. For me though I can tell a difference in my cravings and hunger when I am taking them and when I am not.
    There other thing I wanted to mention was that we are so far removed from our foods these days we have no idea whats in it unless you grow it yourself or get it from a local farmers market and you know the farmers. Our overfarming techniques have taken a lot of the nutrients out of our foods. Yes everything we eat is made up of chemicals but if you think just because something has the same chemicals or enriched vitamins that it is just as good or better than the natural stuff then your mistaken. I challenge you to eat a whole food diet (nothing out of box, has more than 5 ingredients on the list, has things in it you can read, not enriched) for 30 days and then go back and eat something you used to eat. 1. It will make you sick. 2. It wont fill you up unless you take in a huge amount and tons of extra calories. 3. It wont taste as good as you remember.
  • IvoryParchment
    IvoryParchment Posts: 651 Member
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    Don't get too nostalgic about how nutritious food was in the olden days. People understood nothing about nutrition and vitamins. There's no scientific way to compare the nutritional value of the food then and now, when people had nutritional diseases then because they didn't understand/have access to the healthy fresh foods. Even kings ate crappy diets, because they thought the best diet was one that was all meat and poultry. There were no fruits or vegetables except root vegetables in the winter. There was no refrigeration to preserve things, and unless you lived on a farm, it's unlikely your foods retained as much nourishment as they do now, where they are frozen right as they are picked in the field.

    Tuberculosis didn't stop killing people because of antibiotics, but because of better diet and living conditions. Anybody have any idea how to recognize scurvy, pellagra, beriberi, rickets, etc? Probably not, because very few people have seen a case of any of them, but they were common enough in the past to have common names rather than the Latin/Greek medical names that rare diseases get.

    Go to a museum and look at the suits of armor, so you can see how small people were back then. You had to be pretty well-to-do to afford armor, but those people were stunted.
  • TAWoody
    TAWoody Posts: 261 Member
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    Most people can't stick to a diet that covers all vitamins and minerals every day and multi vitamins are so darn cheap that it's better everyone just takes them every day anyways. This way you won't ever have to worry or stress out wondering if you've eaten enough of this veggie or that veggie just to get a certain amount of a vitamin. Would drive sane people crazy.
  • Silverkittycat
    Silverkittycat Posts: 1,997 Member
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    http://gettingstronger.org/2011/03/the-case-against-antioxidants/
  • granolagrl85
    granolagrl85 Posts: 135
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    Generally - No

    I didn't even take one while pregnant. *gasp*
  • fteale
    fteale Posts: 5,310 Member
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    I take a B6 and 12 supplement, omega 3 and Co Q10 every day. I try to get iron too.

    I think the way most foods are farmed these days, intensively without fallow years for the soil, that even eating whole foods, you can end up vitamin deficient.
  • erixitl
    erixitl Posts: 22 Member
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    Coming from a medical background, I'm going to say that I think most people DO need a multivitamin supplement. Unfortunately it is very hard for most of us to assure that we get a "balanced" diet on a consistent basis. Even if you are very knowledgeable and try hard at it, the content of the foods is quite variable depending on how it was farmed/processed. It doesn't do any harm to take one, so at worst you might be wasting a bit of money. However, for most people, you are covering deficits that you don't know about.
  • ironanimal
    ironanimal Posts: 5,922 Member
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    Perhaps not, but better safe than sorry. I take Wellman (a multi-vitamin/mineral supplement designed for men) as well as an additional Vitamin D supplement because of the lack of sunshine most of the year here. Multi-vitamins really don't cost very much and it's an investment in your own health.
  • spottedlee
    spottedlee Posts: 372
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    If you live in northern states,, you NEED Vitamin D. This is something you can't really get by food, but by sun. I live in WA, as per doc recommadation, I take 2,000 IU a day, after being diagnonised of Vit D deciefity (not sure of spelling.)

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