Today, consumers are concerned for their health more than ever before. They want to know exactly what they are putting into their bodies, which has thankfully forced companies to become increasingly transparent about the ingredients that they use in their products. That is why you have seen the prominent display of calorie and carb counts on restaurant menus along with the new and improved nutrition fact label. But what exactly does this mean for your multivitamins?
Did you know that a whopping 75% of adults in the United States are taking dietary supplements? If you happen to be one of them, it might be time to consider swapping to real food vitamins. Many people rely on nutritional supplements to tackle a current health problem or to ensure they do not succumb to possible deficiencies down the road. However, often the best way to fuel your body with the necessary vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, and other nutrients is from whole foods in your diet.
Today, over 90% of Americans are not consuming the recommended daily dose of nutrients needed to support a healthy lifestyle through diet alone. In order to bridge this gap, many health and wellness companies began mass producing synthetic vitamins to get it out to the masses. At first, sales sky-rocketed and these businesses thought they were sitting on a goldmine, so they continued to create these synthetic nutrients. However, what they did not realize was that the ugly truth behind these harmful ingredients would soon be exposed slowing down production.
Synthetic Vitamins
Synthetic vitamins are chemically made from a lab to mimic the natural way your body absorbs nutrients from food. But since they are synthetic, they are actually very difficult for your body to absorb and is often excreted through urine. According to many studies, these synthetic vitamins are:
- Not as bioavailable as whole food vitamins
- Not what you would find in natural foods
- Not recognizable to the body
- Not useable or absorbable
Real Food Vitamins
Simply put, real food vitamins are exactly how it sounds, vitamins from real food sources. The nutrients that you get from these vitamins are made from dehydrated and concentrated whole foods. Scientific advancements have given us the ability to extract nutrients directly from healthy food sources instead of making them synthetically in a lab. By finding mother nature’s richest sources of essential nutrients that we need in order to stay healthy, extracting those nutrients and then using them in supplemental formulas, we get whole food-occurring vitamins and minerals directly from the source.
Real food vitamins are better than synthetic vitamins for many reasons. For one, your body was never designed to absorb chemically made nutrients created from a lab. In fact, some studies even indicate that supplements derived from real food may be absorbed by the body nearly twice as well when compared to their synthetic counterpart. If you are thinking about adding a vitamin to your daily routine or want to get away from your current synthetic multi, we highly suggest exploring your real food vitamin options. Real food vitamins take a large amount of fruits and veggies and condenses them into an easy-to-swallow supplement. You get more nutrients from whole food sources without having to chow down on copious amounts of food. For an example, you can’t eat a whole crate of bananas in just one sitting to be sure you have enough potassium. However, vitamins that come from real food give you the same exact nutrition as the food you consume daily – just in a more concentrated and easy to consume package!