This was a question I had been asking myself for some time. The fact is a large number of vitamin,mineral and antioxidant supplements just can't give your body what it needs everyday to provide optimal cellular protection from the free radicals and oxidative stress that are the root cause of almost all of the chronic degenerative diseases that plague the western world today.Now I could go into the real bottom line of how and why we are living too short and dying too long in todays toxic environment but that will have to be another column.

Essentially there are a lot of half truthes and rubbish when it comes to what a vitamin and mineral product should contain.And as its always diligent to only take advice from world reknowned experts in any field, the supplement field is no different to any other. So what should a product actually contain ? Great question and the answer can be found in " The Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements" Written By Dr Lyle MacWilliam,BSc,MSc,FP and a team of seven expert Bioscientists from around the world.

Lyle was a Canadian Parliamentarian several years ago and became concerned at the flood of these products onto the market place in North America and Canada.So he assembled the team with the goal of providing independant,non biased ,Science based answers for the public and health professionals.After reviewing countless hours of data and research they all agreed on an international standard called "The Blended Standard" which is the top 39 minerals,antioxidants and nutrients that your body needs everyday and the dosages required to maintain optimal cellular protection.By the way the dosages to help prevent chronic degenerative disease not just the RDA allowances which are so grossly outdated and were devised back in the 1950's to provide a guideline for things like scurvy and rickets.

They then used this benchmark to compare around 500 products off the shelves at random,scoring them all from 0-100% based on a very strict criteria.The results were shocking,I used to think that most nutritional products were of good quality until I read this book.Without going into too much detail (you'll need to get a copy to read yourself) most products scored less than 50% .Thats right, you read that correctly.In fact only about 20 products out of 500 scored higher than 2/3rds (66%).And only a few made higher than 90%.

Most of the common products available in the supermarket,drugstore or healthfood shops registered a score of less than 10%.I was outraged,shocked and amazed that these companies could put such low quality products out into the world.

I quickly learned that the major reason for the difference in quality across the board was caused by many reasons but the major one was manufacturing standard.Almost all of the products are made to Food grade standards and only a few select top quality products were made to Pharmaceutical and Pharmacopaea guidelines or Good manufacturing practices (GMP's).

This he same standard to which all drugs are made to, whereas food grade is what your pizza is made to as an example. So comparing the two standards is like comparing pizza and penecillan in relation to the way they are made.

If you are as health concious as I am, finding and using only the best products available makes sense and has really made a considerable difference to my overall health as well as the health of my family.Because our bodies are constantly creating and replacing billions of cells everyday, if we aren't providing the necessary building blocks to get the job done correctly then over time we are very likely to contract a major illness like cancer which is killing 1 in 3 people in most western countries on current statistics.

Without spelling out to you how this process actually takes place in our bodies, wouldn't you want to do everything you possibly can to not only protect yourself from chronic degenerative diseases,but also protect the ones you love ? Because the stats worldwide are only getting worse as we treat the effects rather than prevent it from happening in the first place.