How do people make up for nutritional deficiencies?

[Realitycheck]

Even if you eat full, balanced, diverse meals on a regular basis, it is extremely hard to satisfy all of the USDA recommended daily allowances for anything and everything, pretty much impossible to do it every day without supplementation. Are there any mechanisms in the body which somehow compensate for nutritional deficiencies, or does everybody wind up with weak spots depending on what areas they are deficient in? Is genetics much of a factor at all or is it mostly just a factor if there is a problem?

 

For several years now, I have been keeping up a pretty good diet, but I don't go out of my way to make it as diverse as I should. I stick to a core set of fruits and vegetables that I prefer most of the time and eat other stuff the rest of the time, and constantly supplement with a good multivitamin capsule and a couple of others to make up any differences, namely the important ones that they always seem to leave out of multivitamins. I was kind of shocked to see this Harvard professor on the news the other day saying that multivitamins don't do much for you. I think I would have to disagree with him, as the commentator also pointed out. I think it is important to know the value of a good multivitamin, as opposed to just any multivitamin. I know that multivitamins come with ratings based on absorption values, but I seem to find varying judgements on the validity of such measures.

 

What are your thoughts on this?

[YT2095]

most multi-vits are just a good way to get expensive urine IMO.

 

a well balanced diet is all you need, ask yourself, how did we manage to Get here in the 1`st place before we were indoctrinated into the idea that we Must-Have these vits?

 

hell, even Animals are supposed to have them now! it`s all a marketing ploy.

[insane_alien]

the human body can adapt to slight deficiences in one chemical or another. as long as you are getting some then it will be fine. you should only worry if you are getting none for a very long time.

 

also, for fat soluble vitamins, you're body stores them up. so if you have a period in your diet where you are getting more than enough of a vitamin it will get stored in your fat cells and can be released if you have a diet deficient in that vitamin. this doesn't work with water soluble vitamins like vitC though.

 

if you haven't already developed scurvy or rickets or any other nasty case of malnutrition then your diet is fine.

[Phi for All]

As YT said, most vitamin supplements don't stay in the body long enough to be absorbed. You can increase the effectiveness by taking fewer more often, but most people find that a bit arduous (taking six pills throughout the day one at a time instead of two with each of three meals, for instance).

 

As for why they may be necessary now, don't forget that modern agriculture techniques demand that we limit the variety of crops in order to mass produce them for distribution. A hundred years ago there was more variety in the grains we bought. Now wheat and corn have been chosen as the staple grains over amaranth, barley, rye, kamut, millet, oats, quinoa, spelt and many others. What vitamins and minerals are we not getting today that we used to get with a bigger variety?

 

Tapioca used to be a big favorite, but it has fallen out of favor with the rise of instant puddings, which don't have near the nutritional value of tapioca. What vitamins and minerals are we not getting that we used to get before packaging, distribution and shelf-life became such big concerns?

[ecoli]

A hundred years ago there was more variety in the grains we bought. Now wheat and corn have been chosen as the staple grains over amaranth, barley, rye, kamut, millet, oats, quinoa, spelt and many others. What vitamins and minerals are we not getting today that we used to get with a bigger variety?

Speak for yourself... I still eat all of those on a semi-regular basis, except for kamut, which I eat in cereal form every once in a while.

 

And technically, quinoa is actually a grass, even though it's used as a grain.

[Phi for All]

Speak for yourself... I still eat all of those on a semi-regular basis, except for kamut, which I eat in cereal form every once in a while.

I was speaking for myself. I have to go to specialty stores for all those grains which have become exotic but were once prolific. Most people don't shop at these stores.

 

I used the words "staple grains" to indicate that the vast majority of grain products sold to consumers are made from wheat and corn. I'll try to find some data on it but I'd be willing to bet most people living in the US today have never eaten amaranth, spelt or millet. It's even hard to find rye bread where the main ingredient isn't wheat flour.

 

And quinoa isn't a grass, according to Wikipedia. It says all grains are grasses technically, whereas quinoa is a pseudo-cereal.

[dichotomy]

About the only vitamins I take now are C during colds and flu and B to help alleviate hangovers.