Dietary Supplements - superfluous or beneficial?
Those who live with little stress, lots of exercise and a balanced diet do enough for their health and do not need anything extra, some say. If the need for mineral and vital substances in special life situations increases, dietary supplements can make sense, the others say. Two apparently opposing positions, which are nevertheless not incompatible!
It is difficult to argue that a mindful lifestyle with a diet that is considered complete because it actually completely covers the need for essential nutrients is the best “medicine”. It is also undisputed, however, that the ideal condition of an all-round adequate supply of all important nutrients and vital substances can not always be sustained by healthy lifestyles and a suitable choice of food.
Uncertainties, imminent infections, growth, pregnancy or lactation, menopause, physical or mental stress – all of them may require targeted extra dosages of individual substances.
The market for food supplements comprises all concentrates “of nutrients or other substances with nutritional and physiological effects”. They are means for the promotion and strengthening of the body’s own forces, which are all assigned by the legislator to the food sector.
The supply of plant pressed juices, flower pollen, iron-containing elixirs and capsules, pastilles or tablets “dosed” vitamin or mineral concentrates has grown strongly in the last two decades. In terms of origin, concentration and combination of ingredients, differences in quality are often difficult to detect.
Not least because of this, it is advisable to buy food supplements if necessary in the organic food market. This brings the advantage of ecologically holistic and gentle production, or the guarantee that plant raw materials are processed as a whole and that natural active ingredients combined with their accompanying substances are retained in combination. The latter is particularly important because isolated, synthetic active ingredients, such as ascorbic acid as a substitute for natural vitamin C, can be utilised less well in the body. If you want to protect yourself against stress or colds with an extra dose of vitamins, then with a natural extract such as acerola cherries, you have made the better choice!
