Why Whole Food Nutrition will Always Outperform Multivitamins

In April,1994, Newsweek broke the news that fruits and vegetables were chock full of way more than vitamins and minerals. Researchers had discovered there were literally thousands of compounds in fruits and vegetables called phytochemicals. Phyto from the Greek, meaning "plant".
"Having shown that Mom was right about chicken soup curing colds, and cranberry juice helping bladder infections, scientists are catching up on an even more important front: It is whole foods--especially fruits and vegetables that pack the disease preventing wallop. That's because they harbor a whole ratatouille of compounds that have never seen the inside of a vitamin bottle for the simple reason that scientists have not, until very recently, even known they existed, let alone brewed them into pills," wrote Sharon Begley in 1994.

Ironically, I had already been eating fruits and vegetable in capsules for just over a year at that time and had experienced amazing health improvements that never happened when I took vitamin pills.

Did you know that only 13 vitamins are in a multivitamin pill? And what exactly is a vitamin? They are all associated with a disease of deficiency. For example, scurvy happens when there is a lack of vitamin C.  Beriberi is caused by lack of vitamin B1. Why only 13 vitamins when there are tens of thousands of phytochemicals in plants, also known as micronutrients? And since all of the vitamins and minerals in a multivitamin were originally found in fruits and veggies (except for B12 which comes mainly from animal foods like meat and dairy).k

The "age of discovery" for vitamins ran from around 1912 until 1947. It ground to a halt then, after the discovery of  "the wonder drug" penicillin. Thus began the rise of pharmaceuticals, which dominate the landscape today.
Another trend of the first half of the 1900s was the industrial revolution. In the 1930s there were 3 million family farms. Everything came from plants: food, cleaning products & soaps. At that time "better living through chemistry" did not exist. Rates for heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease and diabetes were minuscule. As people left farms to work in factories in cities, they no longer grew their own food and processed foods made their climb to prominence. Eating whole fruits and veggies declined as the stats for heart disease, cancer, diabetes and autoimmune conditions exploded.
Fast forward to 1990s and technology had finally caught up to allow discovery of micronutrients. As researcher Mitra Ray, PhD Stanford University says, "science doesn't discover the most important molecules first, it discovers the easiest molecules first. Vitamin C is a large molecule that early 1900s technology could see."
So let's compare multivitamins to whole food. The picture on the right shows a vitamin & mineral supplement label and an apple. The phytonutrients listed next to the apple are only the first 400 on page 1 of 17 pages listing the approximately 10,000 nutrients in the apple. Trying to compensate for not eating veggies with 13 vitamin and a handful of minerals is not even close to providing the combined nutrition from tens of thousands of micro nutrients that are provided by fruits and veggies.
Micro is really the operative word here. There are over 60 trillion cells in the body! About 64,000 cells could fit on the head of a sewing needle. Cells are where all of the action is taking place in the body. Nutrients go in, waste comes out. Molecules that are too big cannot get inside of a cell and they are transported to our elimination stations so we can pee or poop them out.
I have noticed this phenomenon first hand. I have never been a regular synthetic vitamin taker, but many years ago, when I felt a cold coming on, I would take chewable vitamin C pills.  On days I ate the vitamin C, my pee would be neon bright yellow. It always perplexed me. Until I discovered and decided to try some powdered fruits and vegetables in capsules.
The first day I took them I was careful to check out the color of my pee. It was clear. A little voice said to me, "if it's not here in the toilet, it must still be inside me!" A couple of years later, my observation was confirmed when a pilot study on the bioavailabilty of the nutrients in the powders proved that antioxidants like betacarotene (the precursor to Vitamin A in the body) and lycopene and lutein and Vitamin E became elevated in the bloodstream. An added bonus was that lipid peroxides (oxidized LDL cholesterol that leads to coronary heart disease) dropped by 75% in just one week!
Since that pilot study in 1996, there have been many more studies published in medical journals using the plant powders or a placebo to do double blind research. There are now more than 40 studies and counting.
So what about the bioavailability of multivitamin pills? I just did another check to see if I could find any research or proof that synthetic vitamins get into the bloodstream. Nothing. If you can find a study that proves that synthetic vitamins are readily absorbed into the bloodstream PLEASE send it my way! I HAVE seen research where people taking certain vitamins had worse health outcomes than the people taking a placebo and the studies had to be halted early.
In another post, I will talk about the different "families" of micronutrients and how they help the body. Until then, here's to your great health!