Some Hard Cold Truth

Re-posted from "Food Matters" Vitamin and mineral supplementation continues to be a contentious issue amongst health professionals. The common catch-cry of the medical community is that vitamins and minerals are adequately available from our food. It’s hard to appreciate the credibility of this advice, when it is delivered from a profession that receives negligible nutrition training.
The inconvenient reality is that food ‘ain’t what it used to be. The marvel of modern agriculture has robbed our soils of essential minerals and consequently, our plants are deficient in these nutrients also. As natural health expert Charlotte Gerson explains; plants need over fifty vitamins and minerals, yet our abused and overused soils only typically receive phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium. If our plants are vitamin and mineral deficient and our bodies cannot manufacture these essential compounds, where else are we supposed to obtain them from?
Whilst sustainable agricultural practices such as biodynamic farming aim to restore our soils to health, we have considerable work to do before this option is universally adopted and available to everyone. In the interim, most of us are opting to eat as best we can however the majority of people fail to eat even the bare minimum required fruit and vegetable servings. This is a tad worrying when you consider that even those who do are probably also missing key nutrients. Importantly, supplementation is not a substitute for a healthy diet. But until we can replenish our soils and eat produce freshly picked in season, supplementation can be a tool to atone for the shameful lack in our foods.