Everyday I wake up and go through the same routine in order to get to class at the last possible minute. Wash my face, brush my teeth, change my clothes, and then take my vitamins (my gummy vitamins to be exact) along with other supplements such as iron and biotin.
It never occurred to me, until today, that I had no idea where any of these “nutrients” were coming from. I frantically read the label and again found no answer. But at the bottom of the bottle I saw in fine print, “have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration,” and this made me even more alarmed.
It is stated by Precision Nutrition that, “When people think of drugs, most think “artificial.” When people think of vitamin supplements, most think “natural.” But both drugs and vitamin supplements can be artificial or natural. Many vitamin supplements produced today are artificial.”
I admit I have fallen victim to believing this. Often we are misled with facts that if we are taking supplements then they should be 100% okay. The chemical makeup of these dietary phenomena is what should be analyzed instead of simply their percent daily value used in achieving the optimum goal. Other factors are important in giving our body what we need. We shouldn’t have to spend hours in the grocery store or GNC looking for the right supplements; we should be able to feel safe taking any vitamin that is placed on shelves.
“When a vitamin is marked “natural”, it only has to include 10% of actual natural plant-derived ingredients” (Andrews). This alarming fact should make consumers aware of the misconceptions they may have. A vitamin they may think is helping them can have some adverse effects since it is being synthetically derived from something else.
You can think of this process like juicing. When you put your desired fruits and vegetables into a juicer the product you get is always lesser in density than what you started out with. Some nutrients can get wasted during the process and may sometimes be the most natural, healthiest ones. This is the same during the processing and refining that takes place during the creation of multi-vitamins.
We are told in science to never assume and that’s exactly what I did. I thought that the worst ingredients in these vitamins were simply other things found in nature. But surprisingly, “Starting materials for strictly synthetic supplements can be anything from coal tar to petroleum to acetylene gas” (Andrews).
With the more common process of synthetically creating nutrients, companies save money as well as precious resources. But should we really worry about money or the safety of health conscious citizens?
References:
Andrews, Ryan. “All About Where Vitamin Supplements Come From.”Precision Nutrition. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2014. <http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-vitamin-supplements>.