Do you really need the vitamins that you are popping?

Every supermarket has a counter specifically for all these over the counter vitamins and nutrients that are supposed to give you immunity, reduce muscle fatigue, solve women’s hormonal problems, increase your libido, and boost your immunity. Have you realized that we are constantly being solicited by marketing companies targeting every segment of health concerns to their advantage?

In this fast placed world, everyone is looking for a quick solution to everything, pop a pill, get a placebo effect and carry on your day. Most of the brands that you see in the super market are just this. Not to say that they are cheating you….sure they do have the ingredients that are known to reduce those health concerns. But is that enough to compensate a healthy meal? Are they FDA approved? Are the health claims they make justified? Has there been enough R&D done to prove it?

Weight reduction pills, fat burners, satiety pills, hunger control capsules and the sort, fly off the market shelves at a speed you would even be able to phantom. Marketing geniuses!!! Read the internet, follow a couple of celeb diets, focus on a basic trend and you have it all set. For the longest time now I have heard even the commoners talk about D3 and B12 deficiency as if they were certified doctors. The herbal medicines just have to mention Ginseng, to perk up interest. The figure obsessed will try anything that says fat burners or supports weight reduction with a convenient tip, have one hour before food. Little do the buyers understand, that is precisely how a diuretic would work, flushing away all the food in your system before even having a chance for get assimilated or absorbed. Conveniently forgetting that whilst the fat liquefies its way out of your body so do the fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, E and K. Doing this on a regular basis only creates a  further consumer market for their sister products, vitamins in a pill!

Eat, people eat. Eat well, eat the carbs, fats and proteins. Eat the leafy greens and fruits to get your vitamins and minerals. Soak yourself in the sun, or simply play outdoors to get your Vitamin D to help in the absorption of Calcium. Eat a rainbow meal to get your anti-oxidants, beta-carotenes. Balance your meals, a correct combination of the above will give your body everything that you require.

Normal, wholesome food that we eat everyday completes all our needs. Everyone by now knows the proteins, carbs and fats. It’s the understanding of the other nutrients. Most fruits and vegetables have a plethora of nutrients. So if we choose, a variety of 4 different colored veggies, 2 different fruits, about 10 nuts(a mix of walnut, almond, pistacho, pinenuts, cashew, brazil nuts) and a teaspoon of different seeds (Pumpkin, flaxseeds, hempseeds, chiaseeds, sesame and sunflower) every day of the week, we would have covered most of our body’s needs of vitamins, minerals, omegas and anti-oxidants the natural way.

If you truly need some help, reach out to a dietician to guide you on what to eat, rather than fill up your beside with all those pills, which are hardly giving you the benefit you need. Of course, there are people who lose their metabolism as they get older, or have a genetic deficiency or have an illness that prevents the digestion and absorption of the essential nutrients and vitamins that are naturally available in the food we eat. But those should be the only ones subscribing and having these pills. Unless one is under a doctor’s prescription, why not eat your way to good health.

Also read Times of India article – Click Here

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