I used to be a big vitamin taker.  I would hear what the latest super vitamin is and make sure I was getting plenty of it.  I did not know if I was deficient in any of these elusive micro nutrients, but I was going to make sure I was getting more that enough.  Every ailment seemed to have a corresponding vitamin to help fix that ailment.  Here is the definition of supplement

Supplement:  Something added to complete a thing, make up for a deficiency

Now so much of our food is “fortified” with these vitamins.  It is added to everything, even soda’s.  The newest magic bullet?  Omega three fatty acids. An article from USATODAY in 2007 alludes to this fact.  If we are getting smarter and know more and more about vitamins and supplements, why aren’t people getting any healthier.  In fact in the United States, we are going backwards with such issues as obesity and diabetes.

Why do we chase after supplements anyway?  They can never replace the effects of the real thing.  In other words, eating real food with that is high in vitamin C content will always be better for you that taking mega doses as a supplement.  If you took all of the nutrients you could out of broccoli and took them as a supplement, it would not even come close to the effects of eating the real thing.

I think we all have been seduced into believing the power of these add-ons.  We have taken our eyes off real food and put them on these magic little pills.  It is very alluring to just take these specific supplements and wham-o, good health forever!  Only it doesn’t work.  The real key is to eat real food.  Not processed or man made, the real deal.  For more information on this subject, check out the book “In Defense of Food”, by Michael Pollan.  It is a great book.

I have stopped taking vitamins.  I have refocused on eating good healthy foods.  Real food, not man made.  By doing that, everything else will take care of itself.  It will just work,because that is what it was intended to do.  But I am not writing this as a discourse on food.  I am using this as an example of the substitutes and supplements that we use on a regular basis in an effort to  “ . . . complete a thing, or make up for a deficiency” in other areas of out lives.

I will talk more about that tomorrow.