Packaged and processed foods offer a convenient source of sustenance, but what about their nutritional value? Busy lifestyles also mean many of us choose to supplement nutritional deficiencies with a multi-vitamin, but is this enough?
Joining our panel of experts exploring natural health, Mira Calton, CN and Jayson Calton, PhD. Here to offer insights on the correlation between nutrient absorption and nutritional deficiency.
Our ancestors survived and thrived by simply eating the foods nature provided and allowing nature, in her infinite wisdom, to nourish and sustain them. We would like nothing more than to be able to share research indicating sustained or increased levels of essential micronutrients in our food. We would love to be the ones to reveal to you that a typical modern diet alone could provide your body with even the minimum RDI of each essential micronutrient. Instead, we must face the fact that for a large majority of people everywhere, the reality of achieving essential micronutrient sufficiency through food alone is all but impossible.
So why are over 90% of the people living on the planet suffering from deficiencies in their micronutrients, or essential vitamins and minerals?
When one starts to dig for the answers it is essential that they start digging were the story begins—the soil. Mineral deficiency begins in the soil. If minerals are not available in the soil, then they won’t be available in the food we eat—and over the past 100 years the level of minerals in soil through-out the world has been on the decline. At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, it was revealed in the Earth Summit Report that in the past 100 years, farmlands in North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia have become mineral depleted on an alarming scale. While Australia’s farms showed the least depletion, with a 55 percent reduction in mineral content, America’s farm and rangeland showed the greatest amount, with a startling average mineral depletion of 85 percent. Crops grown in soils stripped of essential minerals produce foods that are also stripped of essential micronutrients.
Essentially, when our soil is naked, our food is naked. Which ultimately means the calories we consume are ‘naked calories’.
We are not suggesting a conspiracy theory that farmers or government agencies are purposely depleting our soil in order to make us sick. This is not what we believe. What we do know is that farmers are being paid to produce maximum yield per acre, not maximum nutritional value. That’s why in the 1930s, corn yields of 50 bushels an acre were considered quite good, but today, some farmers are pushing their land and are producing corn yields greater than 200 bushels an acre. Farmers are forced, for economic reasons, to grow crops faster and are not financially rewarded for increasing a crop’s micronutrient value. As an example, in 1914 an apple would have contained 13.5 mgs of calcium, 28.9 mg of magnesium, and 4.6 mg of iron. However, according to the measurements taken by the USDA back in 1992, our depleted soil only yielded apples to contain 7 mg of calcium (48.15% less), 5 mg of magnesium (82.7% less) and .18 mg of iron (96% less). And that was back in 1992. If we consider it has been over 20 years since those measurements our apple today, if depletion kept at the same rates, would now have lost 61% of its calcium, 100% of its magnesium, and 100% of its iron.
It is clear that even the “healthiest” of foods will not keep the doctor at bay any longer.
But the soil is just the beginning. On average, that already depleted apple must travel over 1700 miles to your kitchen, and every minute or every mile that your food travels it loses micronutrients. It is not only the likely heat the food endures during transport that robs foods of their micronutrients; exposure to light (UVs) and exposure to air (oxidation) are also culprits. Food transportation is only one way our food becomes stripped. Additionally factory farming, which raises our animals with unnatural feed and environment, takes its toll as well. Wild fish can have up to 380 percent more omega-3 than factory-farmed fish.
Additionally, the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is far less health-promoting in factory-farmed fish. For instance, while the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 in wild Coho salmon is 15.3 to 1 (optimal), the farm-raised Coho salmon has been shown to have a far less optimal 3 to 1 ratio. Grass-fed beef is loaded with more than 400 percent more vitamin A and vitamin E. It supplies higher levels of the B vitamins, thiamine and riboflavin. It has greater amounts of calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Grass-fed beef is two to four times richer in heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Like wild salmon, grass-fed beef that consumes a diet natural to its species has a healthier ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids. Grass-fed beef is higher in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is a potential cancer fighter and fat metabolizer. Cattle that graze on grass have 300 to 400 percent more CLA than animals fattened on grain in a feedlot. Pasteurization, irradiation, and food processing further deplete the amount of micronutrients delivered.
From the farm to the fork, our food supply is not that of our ancestors.
Our food supplies us with inadequate micronutrients and then our modern lives begin to work through them at faster rates then ever before. The water-soluble micronutrients such as the B vitamins, vitamin C, and all of the minerals are generally excreted at a faster rate during periods of stress, and because they are not stored to any great extent, deficiencies can develop rather fast. According to a 2010 report by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, one-half of Americans take at least one prescription medication and one out of every five children and nine out of every ten adults age sixty and over take at least one prescription drug that leach micronutrients from the body. In the last twenty years, we have increased sugar consumption in the U.S. from 26 pounds to 135 pounds of sugar per person per year unaware that the sugar itself can cause chromium and copper deficiencies and blocks the absorption of calcium and magnesium as well as vitamin C. The world around us, unlike that of our ancestors, is filled with toxin, pesticides, herbicides and heavy metals, and to detoxify from these assailants your body to utilize micronutrients as well.
So to fill in the gaps between where you diet leaves off and micronutrient sufficiency is achieved – supplementation is the key. However, here too our multivitamins may not be delivering the nutrition we think they are. In fact, there have been quite a few major articles as of late that are calling for the end of multivitamins, claiming that they don’t work and that there use is unjustified and should be avoided.
As it turns out that there are 4 formulation flaws that affect most supplements (and almost every multivitamin) that block the ability of the individual micronutrients from delivering their optimal benefits. The 4 flaws are Absorption, Beneficial quantities and forms, Competition and synergy. We decided to formulate our own multivitamin (nutreince) that would fix each of the 4 flaws in order to reverse Mira’s advanced osteoporosis.
We started with absorption. The truth is that if your multivitamin does not disintegrate it cannot be absorbed. This seems like a pretty basic concept, but when 3rd party evaluations were done on over 100 of todays most popular multivitamins 51% of them did not disintegrate leaving their contained vitamins and minerals useless to the person who had taken them. We overcame that problem by making nutreince a powered multivitamin, free of excipients, binders, fillers, and sugar that is put into water so it can be fully absorbed.
Second, we evaluated the quantities and forms of the micronutrients most multivitamins provide. We were not impressed. Mira needed calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin K2, and many other essential micronutrients to rebuild her bones—yet—in multivitamin after multivitamin these micronutrients were offered in low quantities or in forms that were not beneficial. We made beneficial quantities and forms a must with nutreince. Today, we provide 600 mg of calcium and 400 mg of magnesium, both in a highly absorbable ionic citrate form. We provide 2000 IU of vitamin D3 (the kind the body can use) and all three forms of vitamin K (vitamin K1, and vitamin K2 (both MK-4 & MK-7). And its not just he bone building micronutrients, nutreince also contains all 8 forms of natural vitamin E (alpha, beta, gamma and delta forms of both the tocopherols and the tocotrienols), 6 mg of lutein, 5- MTHF the most absorbable form of folate (B9), 425 mg of choline and much more. There is not another multivitamin that we know of that includes all of these.
Third, and perhaps most important, is competition. Did you know that more than 80% of the vitamins and minerals in the typical multivitamin compete with one another for absorption and utilization? Its true, and it is one of the main reasons why research often finds benefits of individual micronutrients, such as vitamin D or selenium, but can not reproduce the benefits of these same micronutrients when they are delivered with others in a multivitamin. We spent 6 years cataloging and mapping out as many micronutrient competitions as we could find so that we could separate the vitamins and minerals Mira was taking to avoid these known competitions. After 2 years of proper diet, exercise and supplementation using our now patented Anti-Competition Technology (ACT) Mira got the good news that we had completely reversed her osteoporosis, and we believe it was mainly due to overcoming the micronutrient competitions.
Nutreince is the first only multivitamin formulated with anti-competition technology.
And lastly we learnt that just like many micronutrients compete with one another there are also micronutrients that are synergistic with one another often times enhancing the absorption or utilization of the one or both. The problem is that unless each micronutrients competition is eliminated with their synergies are never realized. Nutreince is formulated to eliminate over 48 benefit-robbing competitions and includes 86 benefit-enhancing micronutrient synergies.
We believe that micronutrient deficiency is the most widespread and dangerous health condition of the 21st century due to a lifestyle that is far different from that of our ancestors, but you can protect yourself by becoming micronutrient sufficient. By focusing on RICH FOOD, becoming aware of your micronutrient depleting lifestyle habits and taking a properly formulated multivitamin you can achieve micronutrient sufficiency and create an environment where you body and health can thrive!
For more information visit: www.caltonnutrition.com
