Supplements vs. wholefoods

One of the chiropractors I work with comes out firmly on the side of supplements to get your daily dose.  He says, for example, that you can’t rely on brazil nuts for your selenium because you don’t know what type of soil they were grown in and therefore you don’t know how much selenium they actually contain.  I guess this makes sense if you live in a totally rational, scientific world.  But the truth is that the most important nutrients contained in Brazil nuts, or kale, or pomegranate, are probably the ones that we don’t even know about yet.

That’s right:  the headline for today is that we don’t know everything.  If we did, there’d be no scientific investigation, no debate and probably a lot less confusion.  So, when you’re dealing with wholefoods vs. supplements, the two mains unknowns to consider are the Life Force and the undiscovered.

1.  Supplements generally are not living foods.  With the exception of something like Kiki’s Nature’s Living Superfood, a living food, and a supplement at the same time.  But even the most carefully prepared and handled extracts end up losing their Qi.  It’s inevitable.  Think about what happens when you pick some lettuce from your carefully tended plot:  at first it’s green ad chunchy and lovely and expressing all the care and happiness that you put into its cultivation.  But if you leave it sitting on the counter for a couple of days…well, it loses something intrinsic.  It loses it’s Life Force.

2.  Wholefoods are not standardized, so, no, you never know exactly how much you’re getting of any one nutrient.  But if you think about it, you realise that a nut is more than it’s amino acids, vitamin E and minerals.  In fact, wholefoods contain a range of phytonutrients whose biological role we haven’t even begun to discuss let alone analyse.  So, by taking a selenium supplement you certainly guarantee your dosage of that mineral, but by eating a handful of Brazil nuts, you get a whole bunch of other goodies that might be pro-biotic, pre-biotic, alkalysing, and who knows what else.

Finally, when you think about what we put into our bodies, how we nourish ourselves, you realise that supplements are not nourishing.  Taking a handful of pills never gives a sensation of satiety.  So for people fighting obesity and overweight, anorexia or just plain bad eating habits, taking supplements might be a good initial step to getting their bodies fitter, but in the long term it doesn’t serve them well.  It’s more important to eat a handful of almonds and feel satisfied and ‘full’ than to take a vitamin E gel-cap.  It’s more important to get into the habit of eating a big salad with avocado and sprouts than to take an antioxidant then eat a bunch of icecream thinking ‘I’ve taken my pill, I’ve done my bit, now I can slack off a bit’.

I come out firmly on the side of whole foods.  Where do you stand?