Nutritional Supplements

Many people maintain that our diet should supply us with all the nutrients we need and in an ideal world this should be true.  However we do not live in an ideal world; the nutrient content of our food is affected by the way it is grown, with pesticides and artificial fertilizers which can damage the plant.  Our food may have travelled many hundreds of miles before it gets to us and the nutrient content of a plant starts to decay the minute it is picked.  Also, how efficiently our body absorbs food can play a role in how much of the foods nutrients we actually get.  Another problem is the high levels of refined carbohydrates we consume cause the body to rob its own, already depleted, nutritional stores in order to process the foods.  So the likelihood is that our diet does not supply us with all the nutrients we need to be healthy and the food surveys that have been carried out would seem to support this. 

We live in a complex world with many demands on us; the stress of living in such an environment causes our body to require higher levels of nutrients than we would need if we were not stressed.  The research of Doctor Roger Williams, author of the book Biochemical Individuality revealed that some people need higher levels of vitamins and minerals than other people.

Research suggests sensible nutritional supplementation can help improve physical and psychological well-being.  But its a mistake just to take nutritional supplements without improving the diet.  Nutritional biochemists have not been able to identify all the vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals in food so therefore it is impossible to supply a nutritional supplement that contains all the phytonutrients that are in natural foods.

Stress causes the body to use up higher amounts of vitamins and minerals when compare to a person who is not stressed so nutritional supplementation may be useful, but it is important not self treat but to see a qualified nutritional therapist.

Caution

Nutritional supplements can be useful as long as the diet is also improved

It is not wise to use nutritional supplements without being under the guidance of a nutritional therapist.

Computerised Nutritional Analysis

Most people believe that they have a healthy diet, however research has shown that the reality is somewhat different.  One of the ways to check how much salt, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, complex carbohydrates, refined carbohydrates, fibre, vitamins and minerals our average diet actually contains is by filling in a food diary and then putting this data onto a computer where a nutritional software programme can supply accurate information in the form of a printout.  These software programmes can be quite cheap; there are companies who will supply you with a free demo programme of their nutritional analysis software that will work for 20 days and after that the programme ceases to work.  If you wish to carry on using the software you can purchase the full working programme.

The moment a food is picked its nutrient content begins to decay, and sme foods are transported 100 of miles and stored before being consumed.  A nutritional analysis of the nutrient content of an orange just before it was picked from the tree and nutrient analysis of the same orange after being picked, transported for hundreds of miles before it was eaten revealed a dramatic reduction in the levels of vitamin C.

Modern method of intensive farming have also been found to deplete the nutrient content of the soil that foods are grown in and this can have a negative impact on the nutrient content of any food grown on this soil.

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