As health care professionals, we see patients every day who lack nutrition in their diets. That’s because the level of nutrition in our society has dropped dramatically in recent years, compared with the diet of our ancestors.

The food Americans eat is devitalized. Modern technology and a fast-paced world have enabled us to increasingly eat on the run, eat too much, and eat unhealthy foods laden with sugar and fat. At the same time, Americans don’t exercise as much anymore. Because of all of this, the percent of people who develop serious diseases increases annually. 

What can you do to help live a healthier life?

It is well known that a healthy diet improves long-term health. You might think that all you need to do to reverse this trend toward bad nutrition and obesity is to make better food choices. But is that enough or even realistic?

No, diet is not enough for a number of reasons:

Hectic lifestyles Daily stress Environmental stress Alcohol consumption

Social eating habits Strenuous athletic activities Smoking and second-hand smoke

To help yourself achieve optimal health, you need to replace the nutrition that is taken out of the food you are eating and boost your intake of nutrients. This is why nutritional supplements are needed. 

Selecting a Supplement
The nutritional supplements you choose are just as important as the types of food you choose to eat. There are many different kinds of supplements on the market as there are foods. All of them have varying ingredients and product benefits. It can be very confusing to determine which supplement is best.

When selecting a supplement, it is important to look at the ingredients on the label of the bottle. Are they all synthetic? Do you recognize them? Do they exceed the recommended daily allowance? Does the supplement sound too good to be true? When selecting a supplement, it makes good sense to go back to the basics and choose vitamins that are made from whole foods.

To clarify, let’s say you are looking for a vitamin E supplement. If you examine the ingredients of a synthetic vitamin E supplement, you will likely see alpha-tocopherol listed as one of the ingredients. Alpha-tocopherol is just one of the many components of the vitamin E complex, but there are at least five other important nutrients within the naturally-occurring vitamin E complex. These are only available by consuming natural whole food forms of vitamin E.

If you were to examine a whole food vitamin E supplement, you would see ingredients rich in vitamin E, such as wheat germ oil, listed as ingredients on the label, rather than alpha-tocopherol. Humans were never meant to take in nutrients in a piece-meal, fractionated form, like an isolated vitamin. Nature makes food in the form of many constituents, most of which have nutritional value. Humans metabolize these nutrients collectively, not one by one. As a result, whole food nutrients are maximally bioavailable and bioactive in the body. Nutrients work synergistically to achieve their biological effects.

The Importance of Reading Labels

Labels can be just as deceiving as the product they tout. As a rule of thumb, you should be able to recognize and name most of the ingredients on the label.

Another point to consider is potency. When we take supplements, we often think that more is better and try to megadose. However, when choosing supplements, quality is far more important than quantity. Often, a small amount of a particular vitamin in a whole food form is far more effective in the human body than a large dose of a synthetic vitamin. Taking more of the synthetic form will not make up for its deficiencies. This is because the synthetic form is still just a fraction of the whole and is missing important parts that the body needs.

Only supplements containing the entire whole food complex are whole food supplements.

What is a Whole Food Supplement?

Simply put, they are supplements made from whole foods. A whole food is any food grown and harvested in nature, without refinement. An orange is an example of a whole food. It is grown and picked from a tree and contains all the things we need for good health - naturally occurring vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and phytonutrients.

Conversely, a food that is manmade and refined is not a “whole” food because it is missing many constituents. It may also contain harmful additives. Donuts, cereal, and canned fruit are all examples of man-made foods – they are not found in nature in this processed form.

Many of the ingredients in Standard Process whole food supplements are grown on the company’s own certified organic farm. They use a unique manufacturing process to concentrate the nutrients from whole foods, so that the food’s enzymes and nutritional factors are kept intact, which provides you with concentrated whole food supplements laden with natural whole food complexes. 

Whole Food Supplements Make the Whole Difference

Wise food choices and whole food supplements provide you with the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, along with their synergistic cofactors, that they need to sustain a healthy life. Whole food supplements can help support nutritional health.

(The preceding text was taken from Standard Process’s 2006 Health Care Professional’s Product Guide, pages 5-7)

How Are Your Nutritional Needs Determined?

1. Contact Reflex Analysis
2. Symptom Survey Form