I was raised in a suburb of Los Angeles in the mid twentieth century, where produce was abundant. I was lucky. My mother prepared all of our meals. She was a Home Economics teacher and always prepared meals using the 'Four Basic Food Groups'. For dinner, we always had a meat, a vegetable, a salad, and a glass of milk. We didn't often have starches and almost never went out to eat. We also had our daily vitamin pill.
I started reading about nutrition and supplements in the mid-1960's when health foods emerged as an outgrowth of the hippie counter-culture. I devoured information from Adele Davis and started getting into organic foods, cutting out red meat, eating whole grains, and drinking herb teas.
It wasn't until the 1970's, however, that I started studying the effects of vitamins and minerals on health. Most of my counter-culture friends were already into bottled water, body work, and healthful eating, so it was easy for me to follow my friends and live a healthful lifestyle. I also loved to learn, so when I was in college I studied health psychology and the effects of food on behavior. Thats when I discovered the terrible truth about our nutrient deprived food supply. Heres what happened:
During WWII scientists were hard at work developing chemicals to fight the enemy. Chemical warfare had been used to some extent in WWI but things 'blew up' during this war, as we developed technologies for synthesizing chemicals to kill the enemy.
After the war, there was no need to have a chemical arsenal to kill people, but the technology was there and so a new industry emerged as a result. Pesticides! This was terrific advance to help deal with the booming post war population. After all, if we kill the insects that are eating a percentage of the produce, we will have more for us!
Scientists became able to manufacture molecules for less money than it took to extract them from foods in the 50's and so they developed the synthetic vitamin market. They learned how to identify and isolate a specific nutrient, and then synthesize it from a cheaper source than foodtypically coal tarto regulate the amount of that substance in each pill. This mimics how pharmaceuticals are made and determines how effectively we can regulate supplements.
They had already established the RDA of a nutrient during the depression to ensure that the population had the minimum amount of nutrients to sustain life. So, synthetic vitamins were the most efficient and cost effective method for manufacturing supplements that have the RDA.
The baby boom created an unprecedented demand for food, which changed both farming and food distribution practices.
1. We started spraying insecticides on commercial produce to increase the production on a much larger scale to adapt to the growing population.2. We started using chemical fertilizers to grow foods faster.
By the sixties, people were ingesting plastics, polymers, synthetic vitamins, pharmaceuticals, and the like at unprecedented levels. Fast food restaurants replaced homemade family dinners as women entered the work force. People started consuming processed foods in amounts never before seen.
Supermarkets replaced the corner grocery. Food was no longer locally grown but was picked green and artificially ripened just before they were put on the shelves. The valuable phytochemicals in the plants that give tomatoes and berries that taste explosion disappeared and we dont even remember the taste of a fresh berry anymore.
But...did it work? If you look at the statistics since people have been ingesting synthetic vitamins, the health of our people doesn't suggest it is working to counteract the effects of the deficiencies in the food. The World Health Organization ranks the United States ranks 37th in overall health as compared to other countries in the world and we spend more per capita on health (sickness) care than any other country!
Once I understood the reasons for our nutrient-depleted food supply, it was obvious to me that we need to replace the nutrients that are missing in the foodnot with synthetics but with food itself if I wanted to avert pain and disease. That's when I learned how to truly support my health with nutrition through plant-based supplements and didn't need to memorize all the details of each kind of vitamin and mineral because I was consuming nutrient dense food in supplements.
There are four basic criteria you need to consider when choosing supplements: they need to be Plant Sourced, Standardized, Guaranteed, and made to GMP standards.
Learn more about choosing food sourced, bio-available dietary supplements and creating the healthy lifestyle of your dreams at
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