Brand name or store brand? Expensive, middle of the road, or cheap? Does cost make a difference? What all do I REALLY need? Here are a are a few things to look for when choosing your supplements and things to look for when determining if the extra cost of brand name supplements is worth it.
Natural vs Synthetic
Natural vitamin complexes, as present in organic foods, differ from synthetic vitamins in the following respect.
In the case of whole food vitamins, we find them in organic combination with each other as well as with minerals, which are equally necessary for their physiological action, including trace minerals, which are of great importance due to their catalytic action in association with vitamins. Then there are the enzymes and coenzymes, upon whose presence the proper utilization and effect of vitamins also depends.
All of these associated factors are not present in synthetic vitamin preparations, whose effectiveness is thereby reduced as compared with a natural source of vitamins. We must therefore conclude that isolated vitamin factors cannot produce the desired physiological action that normally result from the presence of natural vitamin complexes, which consist of a proper combination of known and unknown factors, catalysts, enzymes, plant compounds [phytonutrients], etc., constituting a working team that no chemist, by a process of synthesis or union of isolated factors, can reproduce or imitate.
Nutrients from food
Most farmed soils are depleted of minerals because of the over use of conventional fertilizers which rarely contain any trace minerals. Therefore a large amount of of our fresh veggies at the grocery store lack a fair amount of micronutrient nutrition.
Innate Response Formulas [professional line of Mega Foods] click to view Innate products
grow large batches of nutritional yeast (a super-food which is a non-Candida yeast) and then feed it trace minerals such as GTF Chromium, Selenium & Magnesium. The super-food is then dried and bottled for your consumption in a plant-based tablet. The result is a nutrient based super-food that delivers bio-available nutrients the way nature intended it.
The best way to insure that you are taking the best care of you body as you can is to maintain a healthy diet and exercise program and fill in where you need to with supplements that are as close to the natural source as possible. Be sure to check out our inventory of supplements to help your various systems, from cardiovascular to gut, maintain good health.