Do I need supplements?
To answer that question, let's look at what people ate in the past and compare that to our current diet. Our primitive ancestors were hunter-gatherer's. They had to spend much of their day in search of roots, berries, insects, seeds, nuts, small game, fruits, leaves and other vegetables, and some larger animals and fish. Much of this food was consumed raw. As of about 40,000 years ago, some was cooked. All of it was whole and unprocessed. It is estimated that they consumed around 4,500 calories per day in this manner. They needed to consume so many calories because they spent so much time in physical activity obtaining food.

Now compare that to modern American diets. We consume around 2,000 - 3,000 calories a day of high-fat, high sugar, refined and highly processed extracts of agricultural products that have been genetically modified, artificially fertilized and sprayed with toxic chemicals. Am I being too subtle here? At the very least, we are consuming a fraction of the vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, fiber, flavenoids and other micronutrients that our ancestors enjoyed. Add this to the fact that our ancestors also did not eat the huge quantities of nutritionally empty calories and toxic chemicals that currently deplete our nutritional status and you can see that we are not meeting our needs. So do we need nutritional supplements? I think the answer is yes. We are starving in a land of cheap food. We are starving while growing fatter and sicker.

Of course, if we were to assume an extremely active lifestyle and only eat a variety of fresh, whole foods, we could probably do well without supplements. Some less "advanced" cultures are doing so to this day. This should be our goal because we don't know all the micronutrients in food and we certainly don't know if they work as well in pill form as when they are surrounded by the other components of whole food. Supplements are not a substitute for good eating or other good habits. For example, while it is true that smokers who consume plenty of vitamin A, E and C suffer fewer of the adverse health effects as those who don't, not smoking at all is even better. Similarly, eating junk food and taking vitamin/mineral supplements will not confer the health benefits of eating a diet consisting of whole, natural foods.

In short, eat a wide variety of wholesome foods and use supplements just as they are named Ð as a supplement to your diet.

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