This may sounds like complicated scientific terminology but it really isn’t. This topic really upsets me and so I am going to be very blunt. Let’s say you go to your nearest park and find some dog crap. You pick it up in a bag and take it home. Now, you put it in a blender and add vitamins A, B, C, and D and a bunch of other vitamins and minerals. You turn the blender on and “voila” you have something more than dog crap. You wouldn’t likely eat it, though. After all its still dog crap, you have simply added a bunch of vitamins and minerals. Sorry, but I did mention I was going to be blunt.
Okay, so our friends in the modern food industry take some of your favorite goodies like Wonder bread, Captain Crunch cereal and processed cookies (in my humble opinion, just some of our modern food industry’s dietary equivalents of the aforementioned dog crap). Now, they mix the same bunch of vitamins and minerals into these processed foods. In doing this they are basically practicing “scientific reductionism”. The idea is that if vitamins and minerals from natural whole foods are good for us then we can isolate these good things chemically and simply add them to crappy unhealthy processed foods to vastly improve them.
There is one little problem here – it doesn’t work. Nature is not that simple – but it does sell more crappy processed foods. Study after study shows that our natural whole foods which contain these vitamins and other incredibly beneficial properties are far healthier. These foods, like everything else in nature are infinitely complex and we simply have not been able to mimic their positive attributes with our primitive and arrogant tinkering. These whole foods are far greater than the sum of their ingredients which we have only just begun to identify. (16,271)
It’s not that researching and analyzing our food isn’t productive. It is. There are certain cases where we have discovered life saving ingredients in foods that have had direct effects on the general health of the public. Years ago, it was discovered that an adequate intake of vitamin C prevented scurvy afflicting sailors on long journeys. Still, the debate continues on the health advantages of adding iodine to salt and fluoride to water. What I am saying is that rather than isolating and consuming vitamin C, it is unconditionally better to eat fresh fruits or other foods with vitamin C naturally in them.
Dissecting foods and isolating causal components of them and then thinking we have all of the answers are scientifically unsound and foolhardy endeavors. Why? Because every day we are finding out about new ingredients in the makeup of our natural foods and the way these thousands of natural ingredients interact with and affect people. We simply do not know the all the long term ramifications of taking one vitamin or other substance from say, an apple and taking large single doses of it without all of the other natural elements of the apple present. Please remember; it is the same modern food industry pushing the wonders of scientific reductionism that decided that cows really don’t need to eat grass but were better off eating corn, other dead animals, antibiotics and growth hormone.
There is a simple logic we betray when practicing “scientific reductionism” simply for reasons of selling more food or attempting to save money in the process of creating modern foods. Let’s go back to nature and our evolution. For literally 3 million years the amounts of vitamins and minerals we received from our natural food was restricted to the amount of natural food we could eat. So, to get 15 oranges worth of vitamin C you had to eat 15 oranges. To get the amount of iron in an entire 2000 pound cow you needed to eat the entire cow. Nature dictated our normal and healthy quantities of these vitamins, minerals, and other wonderful natural ingredients simply via the physical limits of the quantities of whole, natural foods we were able to eat. Over 3 million years our bodies slowly changed and evolved according to this natural dietary intake.
Cut to today – we have, in the last 50 to 100 years discovered how to isolate and synthesize just some of the elements of our natural foods; namely vitamins and minerals. Now, we have discovered that some of these ingredients seem to have specific healthful effects on our bodies. So, we arrogantly bumble forward and boldly conclude two things. First, we assume that these isolated ingredients without the other elements of the fruit or vegetable they came from (some still unknown to us, and their complicated interactions definitely unknown to us) are solely responsible for the positive health effect we attribute them to. Second, we conclude that if a little bit from the fruit or vegetable they came from is good then even more, isolated and in a mega dose, must have correspondingly elevated positive effects.
So now you can 25 apples worth of vitamin C by eating some processed sugared cereal in the hopes that it helps prevent your next cold because, of course the company selling the cereal told you so. Unfortunately, nature doesn’t work that way. It is not linear, rather it is chaotic. More of something we isolate out of its natural state does not equal correspondingly increased benefits. Stripping down these active ingredients of our natural foods and taking massive doses can in fact have dire consequences.
Here is a great example of said dire consequences: previous clinical trials revealed that cigarette smokers who ate diets rich in fruits and vegetables had lower rates of lung cancer. Researchers thought that beta-carotene might be responsible for the cancer protection. They compared the effects of a high-dose beta-carotene supplement against those of a placebo in men who smoked cigarettes. To their dismay, the men who took the beta-carotene had more lung cancers than those who took the placebos. This revealed the potential hazards of consuming single nutrients in high doses. (6,279) Further, because many different nutrients are involved in every aspect of human physiology, unnaturally high doses of just one nutrient can create imbalances that adversely affect the absorption or metabolism of other nutrients. This has been especially true for high doses of vitamins A and D and their tendency to induce toxic symptoms. (6, 278)
Nature is a series of delicate balances. Our bodies and their chemical makeup is a perfect example. Isolating and increasing the doses of specific vitamins or other nutrients is like playing with a Rubik’s cube that has an infinite number of sides. One change creates an infinite number of implications. Getting back to the exact status quo is likely impossible. The subsequent reactions and consequences are unknown but profound. They are anything but predictable. This takes us back to an extremely logical premise – when we eat what is basically a human evolutionary diet (naturally raised meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts & seeds) we are eating the healthiest diet known. We are starting with the answer.
Eat as much of these foods as your appetite and taste will allow. That will be the most healthful possible dose of the wonderful ingredients we have discovered in these foods (and the ones we have yet to discover). This prescription and its wisdom are 3 million years in the making and courtesy of our creator.