Recently, I attended a prominent gathering of nutrition and health food companies. It was an opportunity to see many of the latest nutritional products and of course I didn’t go hungry as I sampled all kinds of tasty new organic food products. As I walked the aisles of the show I kept seeing phrases like “whole food nutrition” and “food as medicine” plastered on the booths and handouts.
Each time I was eager to explore what the company had to offer, and each time I walked away subtly disappointed with what I found. As I saw more and more supplement companies advertising “whole food nutrition”, I began to wonder if they were just catching the latest advertising wave.
According to the 2021 CRN Consumer Survey on Dietary Supplements, a whopping 80% of Americans take dietary supplements. A significant portion of these are multivitamin or mineral supplements.
I’m one of these 80% and I’m not against this method of getting nutrition. That being said, when we consider how these supplements are made, they often appear to be lacking, and in some cases may have negative health consequences.
At one end of the spectrum you want to be watchful of supplements that are synthetic or have fillers, which in some cases may be toxic. We are not going to focus on those issues today. On the other end of the spectrum are supplements which are truly made from whole foods. With that in mind, let’s briefly examine the journey of a whole food supplement from “till to pill.”
Let’s say the whole food in this case is beetroot. We assume it is organic, but unfortunately it is not safe to assume it is grown in healthy soil high in minerals and nutrients.
Once the beets are harvested they will be stored and transported to a processing facility where they will be pulverized and then dehydrated.
Once dehydrated, they will be stored in the dehydrated form until they are properly processed and any additional ingredients are added to turn them into a pill. Once again they are stored until they can be bottled.
After being bottled, they will be stored until they are shipped to the retailer or consumer, stored some more, and finally consumed with a glass of water. This is most likely the best case scenario for most supplements bearing the “whole food nutrition” label.