Vitamins and minerals are essential elements for all of our bodily functions and disease prevention. Many people believe they can get all of their nutrient needs from food. They may have been true a few hundred years ago, but not anymore.

Let's explore the reason why:

*Soil nutrients are being depleted

Decades, even centuries, of agriculture have depleted the soil of its nutrients. The plants absorb nutrients from the soil as they grow. If there are little nutrients in the soil, there will be just as little in our food.

*We don't digest our food efficiently.

With today's fast paced life, we inhale our food and don't chew it thoroughly before we swallow. The stomach cannot digest whole pieces of food. As such, the nutrients in these pieces of food just get passed out (hopefully) without the nutrients being utilized.

Try chewing your food until it is liquefied. Digestion begins with the enzymes in your saliva. Eat slowly and enjoy your food. You will eat less and enjoy it more, keeping you from over eating and craving more food later.

*We overcook our food.

Cooking food, specifically vegetables, leaches nutrients from the food. It becomes dead food with dead nutrients. To get optimal benefit from your food eat it raw or juice it.

*Limited food selection

Unlike our ancestors who ate dozens of different vegetables, nuts, seeds, roots and lean meats everyday, we get stuck in a food rut and typically eat just a handful of veggies, a couple fruits and a few meats. That keeps us from the broad spectrum of nutrients our body needs.

Try more variety next time you are at the grocery store. Eat a variety of colors of vegetables. Incorporate nuts and seeds into your snacks.

*A Toxic Body

A body that has plaque formed along the walls of the intestines and colon is not going to absorb food efficiently. Essentially the walls are blocked and the nutrients go unused. Use a good intestinal cleanse to thoroughly clean these blocked walls and the nutrient absorption will improve.

Although we'd like to think we get all the nutrients we need from our diet, in today's society, it just doesn't happen. It is best to supplement with a daily multi-vitamin & mineral source. Liquid supplements are ideal because they have a higher and more immediate absorption rate.