When we ingest supplements, we are mostly taking only a very tiny amount of all the different chemicals found in foodstuffs into our bodies. A high dose of a very small amount of nutrients is not synergy, and is not a food supplement. It's drug nutrition.

A large proportion of drugs are derived from plants. The most potent extract of the plant is removed and made into a pharmaceutical preparation. The herbalist uses the whole of the plant.

In the same way, to make a nutritional supplement, the chemist will take out the most active element in the nutrient complex. This is what is used to make the supplement. This is now not a food supplement but a weak drug.

Ascorbic Acid or Vitamin C?

Does the vitamin label on your supplement state that vitamin C is provided as ascorbic acid only? This isn't vitamin C. This is only a fraction, albeit the most potent fraction, of the vitamin C complex. To get the latter requires the flavonols, flavones and flavonones that are found in bioflavonoids and fruit extracts.

Alpha Tocopherol Is Not Vitamin E

Is vitamin E only provided as alpha tocopherol? But this is not vitamin E. This is only part of the vitamin E complex. There are three other tocopherols and four tocotrienols that are also part of the vitamin E complex. Taking alpha tocopherol alone is not just unbalanced, it can deplete the other parts of the vitamin E complex, reducing their potential health benefits.

Is Beta Carotene Vitamin A?

If the supplement label states that the precursor to vitamin A is only provided as beta carotene, then you are being shortchanged. What happened to alpha carotene? What happened to the 600 plus pigments that make up the carotenoid complex?

One of the early pioneers of clinical nutrition was Royal Lee. He said back in 1940 that the natural vitamin complexes contain the various closely related principles that are normally found together in foods. That is why synthetic and chemically purified vitamins are not really vitamins at all. They are only fragments of vitamins.

So the next time you look for a nutritional supplement to take, ask yourself whether you are ingesting food or swallowing a drug.