I really don’t eat many fruits or vegetables…at all. It’s not that I don’t like them as much as it is that I just never really feel like eating them. I love strawberries and I used to make smoothies a lot (strawberry banana mmm), but they go bad fast and are expensive. The only thing I really take in regularly is the diet V8 Splash/Fusion and low carb Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice.
I have been taking a good multi vitamin for years though - it contains well over 100% RDA of lots of things. It’s Ultra Vita-Man from Vitamin World. So if I’m taking that every day, should I not feel guilty about eating maybe…1 serving of fruits/veggies a week (not counting the juice)?
Can anyone tell me WHY I should eat fruits/veggies in addition to taking my multi vitamin? Or WHY the vitamins in fruits/veggies are better than the ones in my multi?
For those who don’t think my multi contains "enough" vitamins, I’ll break each down by the % Daily Values:
200% Vitamin A
500% Vitamin C
50% Vitamin D
333% Vitamin E
95% Vitamin K
2,000% Thiamin (B-1)
1,765% Riboflavin (B-2)
150% Niacin
1,500% B-6
100% Folic Acid
5,000% B-12
167% Biotin
300% Pantothenic Acid
20% Calcium
100% Iodine
25% Magnesium
100% Zinc
286% Selenium
100% Copper
100% Manganese
167% Chromium
Along with lots of other supplements, such as flax, garlic, saw palmetto, alpha lipoic acid, pumpkin seed, billberry, glucosamine hydrochloride, grapeseed extract, pygeum, choline, isositol, oyster extract, PABA, cayenne pepper, alfalfa, soy lechthin, parsley extract, sarsaparilla, watercress, spirulina, Q-10, lutein, lycopene, and pycnogenol.
I think that pretty much covers my bases.
For fiber, I eat lots of whole grains - I bake my own whole grain bread, eat whole grain cereal for breakfast, and use whole grain pasta (I forgot - I eat lots of pasta sauce - homemade from a local italian restaurant). I also eat this healthy popcorn that has 30g of fiber in it. So I think I’m good with fiber, too.
I also take a Salmon Oil softgel supplement with my multi vitamin every morning.
Vitamins C and E are good anti-oxidants, so my multi is full of those, too.
I would love to start my own garden but I’m a college student living in a small apartment with no balcony…and little daylight…I wouldn’t have the room (or the necessary light) for one. I used to have a garden at my home when I was younger…I grew tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, carrots and potatoes. But the deer always came at night and ate them.
I’m also not a vegan/vegetarian. Sorry, but I love meat (lean meat). Could never live without it. But I thought this would be a good place to post this question because I assume that those here are more well informed about vitamin forms that are good for the body.
It goes like this:
Pure Vitamins cannot be put in a bottle. Vitamins are an intrinsic part of a living thing and cannot be separated. Why, because vitamins are a complex, not just one element. What you see in a bottle of, say, Vitamin C is only one part of Vitamin C, usually the acid, with is only the preservative part of Vitamin C. Vitamin pills are a total scam. Perhaps a supplement made form whole foods would be better, but it would still be highly processed. I’m thinking that spirulina and blue green algae and such products would be the best alternative.
Vitamins within a plant are naturally balanced with all of the other elements that make up the plant, thus, if you eat it, you will be eating a balanced food, and thus be balanced yourself. If you take a pill, even if it’s packed with nutrition, it’s totally unbalanced and thus you will be unbalanced. Being out of balance will put a lot of stress on your body because it will have to fight to keep in balance and do some drastic things such as break this down and get rid of it, take some of that from there and put it here, etc.
Think of osteoporosis. Why does that exist? Because someone eats too much protein over many years. The body only needs and is only capable of using a very small amount of protein and any excess protein needs to be broken down and gotten rid of, and to do this it takes energy, vitamins, minerals, including a lot of calcium. The body takes emergency calcium from the bones to get rid of this excess protein.
So, balance is the key to good health.
So, start a garden. It’s easy; it can even be done in thick plastic bags or pots on the apartment balcony. There are whole sections of books in your local library dedicated to such topics as growing your own food. And it’s cheap cheap cheap!! We have a garden, and it’s an all-year-round garden in Canada. We literally go to the garden and pull out $20 retail worth of stuff and it doesn’t even look like we touched a thing. Living like kings, especially in the spring, summer, fall. It’s one of those things that seems daunting, but once you start growing your own food, it’s super easy. It’s like learning to bake bread; you only get better as time goes on.