How to Select the Best Vitamin and Mineral Supplement

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Why Most Health Foods Are A Waste Of Money?!
And The Real Reason You Can Take Vitamins, Minerals, And Herbs By The Handful And Still Suffer Poor Health.

It can be quite confusing to go shopping for vitamins and minerals these days. They are in every store. They come in every shape and milligram with some having thousands of milligrams. Here is a brief history of vitamin and mineral supplements to help you better understand what the best choice is for you.

The history of vitamins and minerals goes way back to the discovery in the 1930's. At this time certain deficiency diseases were recognized as being caused by a lack of vitamins and minerals. When this was realized the development of Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) came about. In a nutshell the RDA is the amount of essential nutrients from food that is needed to keep a healthy person healthy.

What does this little history have to do with vitamins and Minerals?

The first generation of vitamin/ mineral supplements were developed using synthetic versions of vitamins and minerals. These supplements were created in the laboratory to provide an inexpensive and standardized way to meet RDA requirements. In fact the vast majority of vitamin and mineral supplements are still made using synthetic vitamins and minerals. This includes some of the most popular brands (the ones advertised regularly on the TV).

The major disadvantages of supplements made like this are: Synthetic vitamins are not food so our body cannot uptake and utilize these at the optimal levels. Dirt and Rocks are not food. The solubility of minerals and their uptake and utilization in the body are critical factors.

A first generation vitamin may list 100% or more of the RDA for a given nutrient. But this does not mean your body will be able to absorb and utilize any or some of that nutrient. In other words synthetic vitamin and mineral salts are less expensive but they do not provide effective support for our body to bridge the nutritional gap in our diets.

The next generation of multi-vitamin and minerals is from whole food extracts. They are food and vegetable extracts and or single exotic plant or fruit products, e.g. Aloe Vera, golgi berries, etc. Whole food supplements have nutrients that the human body is able to utilize.

While whole food supplements are better than synthetic vitamins they also have some disadvantages. The reality of our current fruits and vegetables is that they are often deficient in important nutrients. Whole food supplements cannot be standardized for the amounts of vitamins, minerals or phytochemicals they may contain so they cannot be labeled for nutritional values. No single fruit, vegetable, or plant can meet all RDA requirements. Most plants are very high in vitamins but they are generally very low in mineral levels. Whole food supplements are a step in the right direction but since they cannot be standardized they can be significantly deficient in some of the critical nutrients we need for maintaining wellness.

The next major advancement in vitamin and mineral technology is here. The newest generation of supplements has many advantages including standardized natural vitamin complexes, standardized plant-derived minerals, standardized plant-derived phyto-chemicals, and all sources of these individual nutrients are specifically identified and labeled.

So how do you find the third generation of vitamin and mineral technology products? Really you have to be very careful when shopping and label reading. If the label says "whole food" or "plant sourced," make sure you look closer to see if chelated minerals or mineral salts are in the ingredients. Those would indicate that they are not a whole food source. Another common claim is colloidal and liquid minerals are better absorbed by the body. These minerals are still rocks and the body recognizes them as such. The key factor for absorption is a plant source. The best way to make sure you are getting the best nutrient is to ask questions of the seller/ merchant. Ask them until they tell you all the advantages I listed above of the third generation vitamin and mineral supplement.

If you have any further questions, get The Missing Ingredient for Good Health as reference.

The Guide to Choosing Healthy Food at the Grocery Store

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Food marketing geniuses are out to get us all, and no I'm not paranoid. Choosing healthy food at the grocery store is now harder then it used to be, every aisle I saw had tons and tons of products claiming to be healthy, but actually are not. This is food marketing deception at its worst.

One of the most disturbing things that I witnessed was the overly processed foods next to the natural state items and the processed foods claiming to be better for you! Are you kidding me? These processed versions are actually much worse for you than the natural state items and yet they still claim that their junk is better.

The saddest part is that people will simply purchase the item because they believe the marketing. Don't be one of these millions that are falling for these deceptive food marketing tactics. Here are some things to look out for:

Fake Butter Products

You knew that this was next. This manipulated crap margarine that has been loaded with highly processed and deadly trans fat has no right to claim that it is "better than butter".

Don't be a victim and save yourself from this marketing ploy. Even cheap and low quality REAL butter is better for you than this trans fat infested product.

Now if you want to make the best bet, purchase organic butter. You want to try and eliminate all pesticides and hormones that can be found in real butter. Organic, grass fed butter is the best butter to purchase. Grass fed butter has a higher natural form of conjugated linoleic acid. By adding this organic butter to things like steamed vegetables your body will actually absorb the vitamins and minerals found in the vegetables.

Again I can't emphasize this enough. The goal is to actually absorb the nutrition from the the vegetable or item that you are eating. By using real butter the oils will absorb the nutrition from the vegetables and allow you to digest and in turn benefit better from them.

Fake and processed butter products will not absorb these nutritional items and will actually release chemicals into the vegetables. Not to mention that lack of taste and that fake feeling that is obtained when using fake butters. Focus on the real goods and not the fakes.

The content and structure of stable saturated fats found in real butter makes it one of the best oils to cook with. Oils that are high in polyunsaturated fats such as soy, corn, and safflower are horrible substitutes to cook with. By cooking with these unstable chemicals you are ruining the stable product that you are cooking. The saturated fats found in butter are not bad for you.

Fake Peanut Butter

Don't at all fall for this scam! Natural minimally processed peanut butter is as close as the natural state that you can get. These fake preservative filled peanut butters are not better for you! First and foremost if you purchase natural organic peanut butter it is typically two ingredients, peanuts and salt. Typically there isn't much salt added either meaning that it is low in sodium.

These fake 'peanut butters' that claim that they are "better than peanut butter" has list after list of processed junk on the label. Be sure to check it out for yourself the next time you are in the grocery store. Compare the label of an organic peanut butter, then one that has all these claims of being better than peanut butter. These fake peanut butters actually strip away all the naturally healthy fats out of the peanuts so that it is "low fat". They are eliminating the single most beneficial product out of the peanut butter, yes that is actually the part that you WANT to eat when having peanut butter. These appetite satisfying healthy fats that you need to control cravings and manage more stable blood sugar levels in your body.

Again understand the significance here, peanut butter in its natural state is fantastic and simple. It's typically only two products combined and allows for a great fat substitute. These fake chemically processed 'better for you' products are never that. They will create many problems to come and won't allow for a healthy lifestyle that you are attempting to achieve.

To make it even worse the healthy fat is replaced with two different types of sugar based sugars as well as dehydrated cane juice. As well they also like to add refined starches, just in case your blood sugar spike wasn't happy from that added sugar. Yikes!

This has taken your organically natural state peanut butter and added many unnecessary and unhealthy elements! This is now a processed junk food candy delight labeled as "healthier than peanut butter". Don't fall for this scam and purchase their product.

Fake Eggs Products

In a summary, these eggs are nothing more then egg whites with a bunch of added chemical colorings, flavorings, and other useless and unhealthy chemicals added to the healthy natural egg.

These "better than" products have removed the very elements of the egg that are the healthiest part, the YOLK! Yes, the yolks are the healthiest part of the egg contrary to popular belief. Anyone that tells you otherwise isn't fully informed and needs a good lesson themselves. What you need to look for are eggs in the natural state that have been cage-free and organic. I can't emphasize that enough.

Unlike popular belief the yolks carry all of the eggs nutrition. The antioxidants, minerals, vitamins, and trace nutrients are found in the yolks of the product, not the egg whites. Even the protein that the egg whites carry isn't as high quality in bio availability without the amino acid profile which is found in the yolk. This amino acid helps the actual profile of the egg.

I know what you are saying to yourself, what about the cholesterol? Isn't there a lot of cholesterol found in the yolk? Well the fact is that the cholesterol found in eggs is actually good and helps improve your overall cholesterol profile. Not to mention the fact that the fats in whole eggs are balanced and healthy for you as well.

Basically whole eggs are much healthier for you than egg whites! It really isn't even a close comparison between the two products. The label will claim one thing but use your basic common sense knowledge , choose products closer to the natural state.

In conclusion stick with natural state products, and if not stick to the closest natural state that an item could be. Read the labels, if the items include things that you cannot even pronounce then it's a good idea to find an alternative. When reading a label the first item listed is the product with the largest percent in the product, make sure that this is an all natural product.



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