Vitamins and minerals are essential elements for all of our bodily functions and disease prevention. Many people believe they can get all of their nutrient needs from food. They may have been true a few hundred years ago, but not anymore.

Let’s explore the reason why:

*Soil nutrients are being depleted

Decades, even centuries, of agriculture have depleted the soil of its nutrients. The plants absorb nutrients from the soil as they grow. If there are little nutrients in the soil, there will be just as little in our food.

*We don’t digest our food efficiently.

With today’s fast paced life, we inhale our food and don’t chew it thoroughly before we swallow. The stomach cannot digest whole pieces of food. As such, the nutrients in these pieces of food just get passed out (hopefully) without the nutrients being utilized.

Try chewing your food until it is liquefied. Digestion begins with the enzymes in your saliva. Eat slowly and enjoy your food. You will eat less and enjoy it more, keeping you from over eating and craving more food later.

*We overcook our food.

Cooking food, specifically vegetables, leaches nutrients from the food. It becomes dead food with dead nutrients. To get optimal benefit from your food eat it raw or juice it.

*Limited food selection

Unlike our ancestors who ate dozens of different vegetables, nuts, seeds, roots and lean meats everyday, we get stuck in a food rut and typically eat just a handful of veggies, a couple fruits and a few meats. That keeps us from the broad spectrum of nutrients our body needs.

Try more variety next time you are at the grocery store. Eat a variety of colors of vegetables. Incorporate nuts and seeds into your snacks.

*A Toxic Body

A body that has plaque formed along the walls of the intestines and colon is not going to absorb food efficiently. Essentially the walls are blocked and the nutrients go unused. Use a good intestinal cleanse to thoroughly clean these blocked walls and the nutrient absorption will improve.

Although we’d like to think we get all the nutrients we need from our diet, in today’s society, it just doesn’t happen. It is best to supplement with a daily multi-vitamin & mineral source. Liquid supplements are ideal because they have a higher and more immediate absorption rate.

What we do know is that we can’t get all of the nutrition that we need through food alone. What we also know is that vitamins alone can’t do it. So what do we do? Let’s be realistic here, nobody eats five to six servings of fruits and vegetables a day. It just doesn’t happen. Most of us are lucky if we can fit in one or two servings of fruit or vegetables a day.

To eat the recommended daily amount you’d pretty much have to be grazing all day long. Sounds funny, but true. Come on now , we all lead busy lives and a lot of us don’t even sit down to a home cooked meal except for maybe for three or four days out of the week.

So how do we make up for what our bodies are lacking? Vitamins of course. Now vitamins can’t do the work all on their own, that’s why they are called supplements. They are specifically made for that purpose, to supplement what you may be lacking in your daily diet. But, you have to help by eating sensibly and by trying to eat more fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. Vitamins are not miracle pills, but they are essential in making up what may be lacking in our diets and to help keep us healthy.

We have to be smart about how we choose to supplement with vitamins. The first thing that we need to do is find a great Vitamin and Mineral supplement. From that point on we have to be aware of our own individual needs.

For instance, if you know that you don’t regularly eat dairy products or other calcium rich foods, you probably would want to take a calcium supplement. That would be especially important for post menopausal women at risk for osteoporosis. For those who don’t eat many nuts, seeds, whole grains or even much of any kind of vegetables, a good Magnesium supplement would be great.

Vitamin D is so important for people who don’t get enough sunlight on a daily basis. Vitamin D helps the absorption of calcium and a deficiency has been said to cause weak bones and now has been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

My advise to people out there is to read, read, read. Just be informed as to what is out there so you can make a smart choice and get healthy with the benefits of vitamins.