Are Vitamins Essential?

Personally, I do not take vitamins or dietary supplements of any kind. When you are allowing your body to call for exactly what it needs, then it does not need to be fed artificial forms of those nutrients. Basically, there is no need to worry about whether or not you are getting vitamins. They are found everywhere—scattered all through foods. Many people eat cereal, toast, and orange juice for breakfast, and for a little insurance, they take a multipurpose vitamin pill. Let us take a look at this breakfast.

A typical cereal nowadays meets the U.S. RDA for vitamins and minerals. The U.S. RDA is a generous estimate of the protein, carbohydrate, fat, and minerals needs of a large, growing, teenage boy, who could possibly need 3,000 to 4,000 calories per day. In other words, these estimated needs would be way over what a grown five- foot, two-inch woman needs. So to even meet 100 percent of the U.S. RDA is overkill for most of our population. God made cows’ milk rich with nutrients. In addition, the government requires that we fortify milk with vitamins A and D, and perhaps some extra calcium, although milk happens to be rich in nutrients to start with. The piece of toast is enriched with niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, and iron. (Bread has been enriched this way since the 1930s.) These nutrients are also in the cereal and milk. The orange juice is high in vitamin C, as is the cereal, and nowadays it might have extra calcium added to it. We now swallow a vitamin that meets the U.S. RDA (again, the needs of a growing teenage boy) and that is breakfast! If we are a five-foot, two-inch female, we might have met our personal nutrient needs by 500 percent or more for some nutrients by 8 a.m.

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