A few years ago, my wife came home from the grocery store with some name-brand vitamins. She had bought them on the spur-of-the-moment for our baby boy, who was ten months-old at the time.
I asked her, “Are these synthetic?”
She replied, “I really don’t know.”
So I looked on the back of the box to see the list of ingredients. The first thing that jumped out at me was… Aspartame.
The list of ingredients also included things like Artificial Colors: FD&C Blue #2 Lake, FD&C Red #40 Lake and Calcium Carbonate. No real food sources were given.
In other words, this name-brand supplement was a synthetic vitamin.
What’s Wrong With Synthetic Vitamins?
Most vitamins are basically useless and even unhealthy, because they’re synthetic (man-made in a laboratory).
Dr. Heidi Dulay, Ed.D., N.C., is a professor of Nutrition at John F. Kennedy University. In her research paper, “Are Your Vitamins Safe?”, she lists the results from several synthetic vitamin studies:
“In one study, patients who used synthetic Vitamin E had an increase of lung cancer, heart attacks and even death. – New England Journal of Medicine, 1994
In another study, men who took 500 mg of synthetic Vitamin C daily over 18 months showed signs of thickening of the arteries. – Reuters Health, March, 2000
Finally, twenty-two thousand pregnant women were given synthetic Vitamin A. The study was halted because birth defects increased 400%. – New England Journal of Medicine, 1995“
While you will not drop dead immediately after taking synthetic supplements, Dr. Zoltan P. Rona, M.D., says that “the long-term consequences of continuous, daily intakes are potentially dangerous.”
Why would makers of health products do this? Maybe their main concern is with shelf life, taste and manufacturing costs, rather than the health of you and your children.
Whatever the reasons, it appears that synthetic vitamins are mostly useless (“expensive urine”) and even risky.
How To Tell If Your Vitamins Are Synthetic
Dr. Dulay goes on to explain how to know if your kids are taking synthetic vitamins:
“1) Look at the names of the vitamins and minerals in the “Ingredients” listing on the label of the bottle. (You may need a magnifying glass.) A vitamin or mineral is synthetic if only its chemical name appears, with no plant source.
2) Synthetic supplements also often contain weird ingredients, including:
• Additives: Glucose, sucrose, starch, microcrystalline cellulose etc. for binding or dissolving ingredients, or for texture and taste.
• Artificial colors, like FD&C Blue #2 Lake, or FD&C Red 40
• Preservatives: sorbates (eg, Polysorbate 80), benzoates (eg, sodium benzoate), nitrites (eg, sodium nitrite), sulphites (eg, sulphur dioxide)”
Synthetic vitamins are highly processed and manufactured at high temperatures. They contain toxic ingredients such as dyes, preservatives and other additives – like what’s found in paint and plastic.
Note: Most synthetic vitamins are now made in China. Since the U.S. doesn’t require country-of-origin labels for supplements, how do you know if your vitamins are safe or synthetic?
A Solution
There’s a new class of supplements called “whole-food supplements”. These are supplements made from real food. The ingredients in whole-food supplements are usually made from fruits and vegetables, such as Vitamin C from oranges or Vitamin A from tomatoes.
Whole-food supplements do not contain artificial colors, preservatives and other toxic additives. They naturally contain hundreds of “cofactors” (other nutrients) the body needs to absorb vitamins.
Cofactors are missing in synthetic vitamins. This causes the body to treat the vitamin as a foreign substance and eliminate it. Worse, your body may grab the needed cofactors from its own organs, bones, muscles and other tissue. In other words, your body starts eating itself.
Over time, this depletes your body and causes degeneration and disease. (For example, regularly taking synthetic calcium depletes the body of magnesium. A lack of magnesium can cause headaches, constipation, asthma and hardening of the arteries.)
Whole-food supplements solve this problem because they’re made from real food. They show the name of the fruit or vegetable in the list of ingredients, such as “pineapple” or “broccoli”.
This is what separates the quality vitamins from the grocery store cheapies.
How To Find Whole-Food Supplements
Check the labels before you buy from your GNC or drugstore. Read the list of ingredients. Buy vitamins with the food source listed on the bottle.
Above all, make sure any supplements you or your kids take are made from real food.
Why give your family anything else?
To your good health,
Paul Eilers
P.S. Man-made, synthetic vitamins are a waste of money and may even be harmful to your health. That’s why it’s important to make sure any vitamins you or your children take are made from real food. Otherwise, you’re better off taking nothing.
A real food supplement our family takes and recommends is BarleyLife Xtra™. It’s eighteen fruits and vegetables in a powder. We give it to our son because he’s a picky eater, to make sure he gets enough nutrition every day.
P.P.S. BarleyLife Xtra™ is eighteen fruits and veggies in a powder. It’s primarily for kids, though adults take it too.
I put together this educational report because I believe nutrition matters. I invite you to explore our website and see how BarleyLife™ and BarleyLife Xtra™ can help you and your family be healthy too. To learn more, click here.
“BarleyLife™ and BarleyLife Xtra™ – Nutrition That Works”
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