The Only Safe Source Of Nutrients

5. The Only Safe Source Of Nutrients

Dr. Herbert M. Shelton has studied the effects of food and nutrition on human health longer than almost anyone else in the world today. He has long detailed the dangers of depending upon supplements, pills, and powders for adequate nutrition. When asked about the use of nutritional supplements in the diet, Dr. Shelton replied with this list of four important facts:

1. We do not yet know how much of any food element the body needs.
2. We do not yet know all of the elements that are structural and functional constituents of the human body.
3. We do not know that all of the vitamins have been discovered.
4. We do not know that there are no other and hitherto unsuspected food factors in foods that are as essential as those that are known.”

Since our knowledge of nutriton can never be complete, it is impossible to construct a pill or supplement that can most assuredly supply us with all of our needs. “These things being so,” writes Dr. Shelton, “there can be only one safe source of nutriment, and only one source that is capable of supplying us with all known and unknown food elements. This source is natural foods.”

There can never be a pill or supplement that will furnish a human being with all of the nutritional elements required for superior health. Our physiology has developed over hundreds of thousands of years on fresh, wholesome fruits and vegetables. Our entire system is geared toward extracting elements of life from plant foods alone. We cannot survive on pills; we cannot thrive on supplements.

We require and need only fresh foods from the plant kingdom and nothing else.

5.1 One-a-Day Multiple Vitamins and Other Lies

Still, there are people who are fascinated by pills. “Just to be safe,” such a person says, “I always take a good, all-around multiple vitamin and mineral tablet.” “Just to be we,” such a person will say, “I swallow a tablespoonful f iron supplement each morning.”

These people are not buying good nutrition; they are seeking peace of mind in a pill or tablet. Yet if they knew that they were swallowing lies along with the pills, they might seek peace of mind elsewhere. Consider this newspaper report which appeared only this month: “Survey Finds Multivitamins Dangerous.”

In a survey of the 41 most commonly-purchased multi-vitamin pills, it was discovered that many of them contain either dangerously high or inadequate doses of vitamins and minerals. According to a clinical nutrition researcher, “Most vitamin supplements we looked at exceeded the 200 percent mark for the Recommended Daily Allowance, which makes the vitamins perhaps dangerous.” The researcher further stated that these supplements often contain excessive amounts of fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K which can be harmful since these vitamins are stored in the body when taken in amounts greater than the body’s needs.

There have been many cases where people were found suffering from vitamin toxicosis due to the abnormally large amounts they were taking and retaining through supplements and pills. Well, what about wholesome foods such as carrots, melons, etc., that are naturally high in vitamins; Does this mean that we can get too many vitamins from these natural sources?

5.2 Safety in Nature

If you are eating fresh foods in their natural state, you cannot overdose on vitamins. Why is this? For one thing, the sheer bulk of the food alone prevents you from eating amounts that would contain excessive vitamins. Of course if you juice all of your foods and drink quarts of carrot juice every day, then it might be possible to get too many natural vitamins. Yet even in these circumstances, there are built-in safeguards in natural foods.

For example, the vitamin A in plant foods comes from a compound called carotene. The carotene in these vegetable foods is converted to a form of vitamin A in the liver only if there is a need for the vitamin in the body. In other words, if you ate about ten large carrots, you could potentially be ingesting around 100,000 units of vitamin A. Yet if your body only needed say 20,000 units of vitamin A, then the carotene conversion to vitamin A would not occur for the other potential 80,000 vitamin A units.

The body has an innate wisdom and knowledge of its true needs. As long as we supply the body with its natural food and fuel, we need not fear the consequences. Any time vital elements are extracted from our foods and packaged as concentrated supplements and pills, then we are taking serious chances with our health. No scientist, no chemist, no nutritionist has the type of knowledge that the body possesses. No laboratory can duplicate the wonderous processes of the human body. No experiment can replicate the intricate life processes that occur during food digestion and assimilation. No pill or supplement can ever be labeled completely safe.

There is only one safe source for our nutritional needs: fresh, wholesome foods from the plant kingdom. All else is suspect and should be rigorously avoided.