If you're in good health, it's best to get your daily nutrients from food, since vitamins and minerals from food are often easier for your body to absorb. It's best to improve your diet before using supplements, advises Dr. This is because vitamins and minerals are most potent when they come from food. In foods, they come with many other beneficial nutrients, including hundreds of carotenoids, flavonoids, minerals, and antioxidants that aren't found in most supplements.
In addition, foods taste better than supplements and are usually cheaper. For people who can't make dietary changes or for those who have genuine deficiencies in one or more nutrients, a supplement may be helpful. Look for a multivitamin with B vitamins (especially folate), vitamin D, iron, magnesium, and calcium. Choose a well-known brand that has been around for a long time and that has probably been thoroughly tested, says Dr.
It is also strongly recommended that pregnant women take a prenatal vitamin to cover the growing baby's additional nutritional needs, especially folic acid. The Vitamin and Mineral Expert Group (EVM) defines the safe upper level (SUL) as “an intake that can be consumed daily for a lifetime without significant health risk”, according to available evidence (3) and refers only to intake from supplements. Once the nutrient intake of supplements has been evaluated, they can be added to the intake from food to obtain the TNI. Traditionally, essential nutrients have been studied in relation to health and, although micronutrient deficiencies are still common in the UK population, relatively high nutrient intake may not be an indicator of healthy food choices, as reflected in national surveys on the low consumption of fruits, vegetables and fish.
There are also few plant-based sources of vitamin D, so those who avoid foods such as eggs, seafood, and salmon may need supplements, especially if they don't get much sun exposure. In particular, in the case of vitamins A, D and E, and of the minerals iron (among women) and selenium, a lower prevalence of intake of these nutrients was observed below the ear (up to 34% less in the case of vitamin D) after the incorporation of supplements of these nutrients to adults. Feeding the body with mostly nutrient-rich foods is like eliminating the middleman and going straight to the source of vitamins. Above all, given that the intake of supplements could exceed that of food origin and, therefore, approach the intake associated with the saturation of biomarkers.
Whether vitamin C comes from food or supplements, they vary in terms of reference time (they may reflect recent or prolonged exposure) and some nutrients are homeostatic or may be affected by disease. Taking into account the variation in supplement consumption in Europe (30.3), supplements vary in terms of their contribution to food intake and the proportion of the population at risk of not reaching the appropriate limit values for consumption. If you're interested in health and wellness, you probably have a cupboard full of vitamins, supplements, powders and superfoods that you've been accumulating over the years. When replacing foodborne intake with TNI, associations in the SU+E group weakened to 1% (1.2%); although the adjusted correlation went from 0.09 (food only) to 0.43 (TNI) among SU+E (since supplementary vitamin E intake may be more than 10 times higher than dietary intake in the United Kingdom).
Usually, the chemical structure of a vitamin taken in pill form is the same or very similar to the chemical structure of the same vitamin found in food. The supplemented nutrients are capable of increasing the plasma concentrations of the respective nutrients, in particular vitamins and fatty acids.
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