Does anyone know:

The amt of vitamin in most caps/tabs is about 50-100 times the amount you could obtain from even the most vitamin-heavy food at one meal.

Why do they put such huge quantities in one pill? Is it because 90% of the wanted substance is not even absorbed? Then that means the remainder is either excreted or deposited someplace in the body where it wasn't meant to be.

If it is excreted, still, that is work for the body to perform.

I would think that vitamin/mineral pills are really not a good idea for these reasons. Do you all here really feel "better", that you have truly benefited from taking vitamin/minerals in the form of pills? I would like to hear your opinion.

I take 500mg vit c, magnesium pills, 200iu vitamin e, 200% RDA B12, occasional selenium, and 2 alginate a day and I definitely find they help me. I'm not sure about the vitamin c, but the others certainly do. If I start missing dosages, I really start to suffer with pins and needles and other neurological problems from the mercury. I wouldnt take the high dosages of vitamins, though, on my belief that there is too much of a good thing.

I think synthetic vitamins throw the bodys natural systems out of balance. I get all my nutrition from organic high quality foods and natural supplements (bee pollen, spirulina, etc...).

I haven't gotten sick once since I started eating better about a year ago, and I had 10 mercury fillings in that just got removed last month. Getting all my nutrition from whole foods has worked for me, but I suppose some may need supplemented with mega doses of synthetic multivitamins.

Getting vitamins from foods is probably better, but quality food costs, and organic food costs even more, so I can't afford to eat as well as I should at the moment. I also can't eat fruit so I need the vit c supplement. I also don't eat meat or diary (generally) so I need B12 supplement. When you're on a limited budget and particular diets, it's a real juggling act.

Not sure I agree with this. Where did this information come from?

Most food today is very deficient in nearly all vitamins/minerals in comparison to other countries and truly organic foods. I have a study showing 10 to 100 TIMES the mineral content in organics vs. non from U. of Florida.

Also have information about much higher mineral intakes producing longer, healthier disease-free lives.

Whole organic foods are probably the best source of general nutrition but supplements do have their place, particularly when dealing with certain diseases that benefit from supplementation or deplete nutrition. All good things in balance.

Hi, I am mostly talking about Vitamin B and E when I say that people are being talked into taking anywhere from 50-100 mg/day of Vit B.and 400-800 mg/day of Vitamin E. I am herewith quoting from a book on wholefood vitamins:

Question: Do you really need 100 mg of the B vitamins?


Answer: According to the Nutrition Almanac it would take 1,655 cups of fruits, grains and vegetables to provide 100 mg. of the B vitamins. If we were intended to eat 100 mg. of B vitamins per day our food would have much higher amounts.

Even if you went heavy on eating liver and other high-vitamin organ foods, you would still have to eat more than you could stand - your stomach would burst.

I do think that if you have been seriously deficient in vitamins, it can't hurt, and it might help, to take these dosages for a short period. But so many people take these dosages daily, year after year.

Regarding mineral content of foods in org VS non-org grown. I am sorry to say that that may be accurate for that one study you quote. But not all organic farmers supply their soil with large quantities of mineral-rich fertilizer; they use only the minimum to get the plant growing and attractive to look at. A vegetable/grain/fruit will certainly grow nicely even though it may not have any more mineral content than a non-org grown.

Organic standards do not require the grower to produce certain minimum mineral content. All they require is that the grower not use any artificial fertilizer or pesticide, no GMOs and a few other requirements.

I have bought broccoli, for example, at the supermarket, with a nice solid stem. I have also bought certified Org. Grown broccoli with a hollow stem - a sign of mineral deficiency. This is only one example.

Unfortunately, "organically grown" does NOT autmatically mean "good" and non-organically grown does not automatically mean "bad". It is about the health of the soil overall. I, myself, don't use anything chemical or artificial in my garden and I do trouble myself to fertilize with natural substances - chicken manure from naturally-raised chickens, seaweed concentrate, etc.

For further info, look up "ecological agriculture". It is a style of growing food that goes beyond mere organics.

I guess I should not have gone off-topic.

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They had a set of criteria that they defined as "organically grown" in the study. Nevertheless, the results show that pesticides generally inhibit mineral absorbtion, which is pretty common knowledge in some circles. Minerals account for a much larger percentage of chemical reactions in the body than do vitamins.

I've seen compelling studies of remote cultures that intake many-times the mineral content that we do and they are nearly disease free (hence, the reason the study was conducted) and they live much longer.

Severe crop mineral deficiency statements were made by the U.S.D.A. as early as the 50s.

Also, I wonder what type of plants were used when determining that vitamin quantity in plants is low compared to supplements. Maybe it's just that: Modern crops are vitamin deficient.

You have to be cautious when considering this type of "evidence" stating that we take too many vitamins. In nearly all of the cases I've looked into, these statements were made in the interest of the pharmaceutical companies. Why? Keeping the masses sick—in part by discouraging the use of supplements—will keep the pharmaceuticals profitable. Hence CODEX.

Food for thought <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Yes, your points are all well made, and I can't disagree. Of course mineral-rich food is going to contribute to good health, as you mentioned with the remote cultures. But I would look at the larger picture where those people's good health is concerned.

I will repeat myself: there is a type of "organic farmer" who does not use anything artificial - and not anything natural, either. They just keep using their soil till it can't grow anything any more. These people either have some land sitting around and decide to mine it for all it's worth for as long as they can - as the Europeans did when they came to America - or they just don't think about mineral content of the food they are growing. We had a neighbour who wanted to be an "organic farmer" and he added no fertilizers whatsoever.

The mineral content of the food they grow is poor because, while they aren't using any chemicals that inhibit mineral absorption, neither are they adding any fresh minerals to the soil which the plants can use. All the while considering themselves "organic farmers".

When I first began "organic gardening" about 25 years ago, I was as ignorant as some of those farmers. I discovered, very quickly, that I had to resort to using pesticides (organically "acceptable" ones) because, I now suspect, the plants were weak from their poor mineral content. Live & learn, huh?