Nutritional supplements are essential to any weight loss program because the nutritional content of our food is so poor these days. To digest sufficient quantities of essential nutrients you have to eat through a whole stack of food.
There is growing research to support the theory. Neuroscientists working at the University of California have found an enzyme known as GCN2 kinase that monitors incoming nutrients in the blood. It triggers a mechanism that can switch appetite on and off and direct us to healthier food.
When eating a food that's deficient in one of the 20 critical amino acids , the body detects the deficiency in the blood and inhibits the appetite in order to prevent you eating too much of one thing. The danger is that you keep switching to new food and never find the essential amino acid because it is not there. Finding those essential nutrients early in a meal is essential if we are to reduce the quantity we eat.
Keep Feeling Hungry?
You will continue eating until your body has absorbed enough of the essential amino acids. If your food contains little of these then you will remain hungry until you have eaten enough. In the process you will have taken on large amounts of other less useful food like carbohydrate and fat.
How Nutritious Is Your Food?
Obviously the type of food is important too, but even fresh vegetables are depleted in essential nutrients.
Modern farming techniques and artificially accelerated plant growth have contributed greatly to the poor nutritional content of food. An analysis of nutrient content of food recently compared with the 1920's estimated the nutrient content to be only 20% of what it was then.
Several studies comparing historical levels of nutrition have shown that today’s fruit and vegetables often provide less nutrient content than at any time on record (see chart above). One of the reasons is that crops are harvested before they are ripe. There are also cultivation problems - soils are overused and depleted in minerals, heavy use of pesticides andartificial fertilisers. Then there are delays through transportation and storage, startlingly for up to several years.
Fats, carbohydrates and proteins are in abundant supply in most of our diets. The important nutrients that much of our food lacks are minerals, vitamins, enzymes, co-enzymes, trace elements, phytonutrients, essential fatty acids and amino acids.
Instead of eating vast quantities of poor quality food to seek out these essential nutrients, there a two solutions.
- 1. Find a source of good organic produce grown from genetically
unmodified seeds which we will contain their natural nutrient levels.
This is unfortunately an expensive and inconvenient solution for most
people. This is unquestionably the best solution though probably
terrible for your social life as it would exclude most restaurants and
you'd always be carrying your own food to dinner at friends'.
- 2. Take high quality rapidly absorbable nutritional supplements with
every meal. By 'high quality' I mean liquid or colloidal preparations
that have high (90% plus) absorption.
Caspsules and tablets often only have absorption of around 20-30%. Make sure they are as fresh as possible. If they've been sitting on a shelf in a shop for months and possibly years, the potency of some can be severely reduced.
Most nutritional supplements are made from petrochemicals and so are completely artificial. A smaller portion are made from plants but most of these have the vitamins extracted with chemicals and heat and are no longer 'natural'. The word 'natural' on a label means that only 10% has to come from natural sources.
What you are looking for are 'whole food' vitamins that have been carefully extracted and are unaltered in any way.
Best Sources of Nutritional Supplements on the Internet
Nutritional supplements have a limited shelf life and they are very sensitive to storage conditions. Retails stores often keep their products in conditions that are less than ideal (warm shop shelves, storage rooms with no humidity or temperature control) , so they deteriorate rapidly. This is about the best reason to buy online, especially from a larger company.
Just about the largest and certainly the cheapest source on the internet is E-Vitamins. One good thing about a large company like this is that they have a rapid turnover of product, so they are fresh. Compared to retail outlets you can save 20%-70% on retail prices.