I don’t know why anyone would find this surprising. Ultra processed foods are practically devoid of any meaningful nutrition. It’s not the calories We need to worry about, but the lack of vitamins and minerals that power the enzymes in our body that we need to worry about.
Edit to add: I guess people are down voting this because they’re misinterpreting what I’m saying. I’m not saying that you can eat all the calories you want, but you can’t metabolize calories if you don’t have the nutrition that powers the enzymes for the metabolism of the calories.
The reality is that a lot of modern folk knowledge around nutrition carries a legacy of the essentialism characteristic of 20th century science because that's both when "food science" was born and when advertising and consumerism changed everything about kitchens and dining tables.
Scientists during that period naively distilled hugely complex food traditions and foodstuffs to a conveniently quantifiable, finite list of essential "nutrients". Meanwhile, product designers began to call themselves food scientists and formulated consumer products that could be honestly said to deliver these nutrients and their marketing teams took that vision straight to the bank. Science figured out what all you really needed, and Nestle (et al) had product that gave it to you with the most convenience and flavor.
That sweeping and extensive cultural reprogramming, which came at the expense traditional food practices and the generational transfer of them, doesn't just shake off again because a few research studies suggest that gut biomes matter, or that whole foods matter, etc
It took 2-3 generations for it to normalize processed food and it'll likely take at least 2-3 generations to meaningfully recover. Hundreds of millions of households now exist without someone who even knows how to cook being a part of them. Trying to convince those households to give up on cans and boxes of convenient, tasty mush in favor of food that they have to actually handle and prepare is a big big task.
Devoid of meaningful nutrition would actually be super healthy all things considered given that for most of the developed world the #1 thing you can do for your health is eat less.
Vitamins and minerals can be replaced with supplements, the more interesting result is "are the foods we get a large portion of our calories from actively bad, why, and can we fix that like we did for trans fats?
Vitamins and minerals can't just be replaced with supplements, bioavailability is a massive part of nutrition. One can't just take pills and assume your GI tract will be able to absorb a majority of that like you're eating real food.
Many nutrients require other nutrients to even be absorbed in the first place. Many vitamins are fat-soluble, meaning they get to you through something fatty. Calcium is worthless if you don't get the vitamin D to help put it to use, things like that
and even further: some can't be absorbed by us directly at all and the bacterial flora in our gut must do that for us before we can benefit from it. Those bacteria must be supported and replenished, too.
Vitamins and minerals can 100% be replaced by supplements, but not all phytonutrients and fiber can. If you take cheap worthless forms of vitamins or minerals when better forms are available, that's on you.
Yes, the microbiotia need feeding, mainly via fiber. They synthesize whatever else they need on their own.
If you take cheap worthless forms of vitamins or minerals when better forms are available, that's on you.
Is there some sort of readily available system/metric/standard that a normal consumer can use to evaluate the bio-absorbability in a bottle of vitamins? I know some of them have higher-than-recommended FDA daily values, presumably to make up for the availability, but... as with so much of the supplements industry, it all seems like mostly untrustworthy marketing?
Shouldn't it be possible to calculate (and label) dosage * absorbability of a particular source in pill form = effective dosage?
I don't know of any singular resource, but if you ask me here or in r[eddit]/FoodNerds about a specific vitamin or mineral, I will be happy to share what I know. You can message the mods there if you want with a specific question.
The FDA doesn't set the values, and be glad they don't because they're very corrupt in ways you wouldn't realize. If it were up to the FDA, every product that doesn't pay the FDA a bribe of $1 million for "certification" would be banned, and then everything would cost the consumer 10x. You would also then have to pay a useless licensed practitioner for the privilege of buying anything, typically at a dose that would be too low to improve health. The NIH ODS sets them, and you can read them at https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/
There is no standard because each vitamin and mineral is unique and special. There are some heuristics, but they only go so far. For example, an ideal dose is often (but not always) close to the average of the minimum and maximum limits.
And believe me when I say that I do my best to keep the cost as low as possible while keeping the quality good enough.
Thank you! I swear people are acting like one, no one has ever thought of this before, and two that whole foods and the ways we prepare them are magically ideally bioavailable to us like plants give a shit.
Vitamins and minerals can be replaced with supplements
No, you can't. Supplements often have either bad absorption or risk of overdose, because need to be associated with some other nutrient (fat, fiber, etc) or the absorption is regulated by something else.
If you're a reckless person who overdoses, or if you don't know a good form from a bad form, then your answer is no. If you are well informed and know how to safely seek effective products, then the answer is yes.
Like you don't even have to know all that much and the bar is crazy low. Even if your diet is absolute garbage it's unlikely you're actually deficient in anything.
I've just been accumulating daily supplements from dr recommendations over the
years — the good fish oil for my dry eyes, b12 because I don't eat much meat, high-dose turmeric because mild jaw inflammation, d3 because I'm light sensitive and don't go out in the sun enough, and a women's multivitamin.
I don't really think about my diet at all outside of roughly total calories and haven't gotten a bad bloodwork yet.
P.S. For dry eyes, besides decent omega-3s, these also help me:
* Dry vitamin A: 6667 IU per day in the summer, and 10k IU per day in the winter. Test its blood level every two years.
* Taurine: 2g/day before bed.
* Vitamin D3: 4000-5000 IU per day to prevent further damage to tear glands due to subclinical autoimmune attacks. Test its blood level every year or two.
Comments
I don’t know why anyone would find this surprising. Ultra processed foods are practically devoid of any meaningful nutrition. It’s not the calories We need to worry about, but the lack of vitamins and minerals that power the enzymes in our body that we need to worry about.
Edit to add: I guess people are down voting this because they’re misinterpreting what I’m saying. I’m not saying that you can eat all the calories you want, but you can’t metabolize calories if you don’t have the nutrition that powers the enzymes for the metabolism of the calories.
The reality is that a lot of modern folk knowledge around nutrition carries a legacy of the essentialism characteristic of 20th century science because that's both when "food science" was born and when advertising and consumerism changed everything about kitchens and dining tables.
Scientists during that period naively distilled hugely complex food traditions and foodstuffs to a conveniently quantifiable, finite list of essential "nutrients". Meanwhile, product designers began to call themselves food scientists and formulated consumer products that could be honestly said to deliver these nutrients and their marketing teams took that vision straight to the bank. Science figured out what all you really needed, and Nestle (et al) had product that gave it to you with the most convenience and flavor.
That sweeping and extensive cultural reprogramming, which came at the expense traditional food practices and the generational transfer of them, doesn't just shake off again because a few research studies suggest that gut biomes matter, or that whole foods matter, etc
It took 2-3 generations for it to normalize processed food and it'll likely take at least 2-3 generations to meaningfully recover. Hundreds of millions of households now exist without someone who even knows how to cook being a part of them. Trying to convince those households to give up on cans and boxes of convenient, tasty mush in favor of food that they have to actually handle and prepare is a big big task.
Devoid of meaningful nutrition would actually be super healthy all things considered given that for most of the developed world the #1 thing you can do for your health is eat less.
Vitamins and minerals can be replaced with supplements, the more interesting result is "are the foods we get a large portion of our calories from actively bad, why, and can we fix that like we did for trans fats?
Vitamins and minerals can't just be replaced with supplements, bioavailability is a massive part of nutrition. One can't just take pills and assume your GI tract will be able to absorb a majority of that like you're eating real food.
Many nutrients require other nutrients to even be absorbed in the first place. Many vitamins are fat-soluble, meaning they get to you through something fatty. Calcium is worthless if you don't get the vitamin D to help put it to use, things like that
and even further: some can't be absorbed by us directly at all and the bacterial flora in our gut must do that for us before we can benefit from it. Those bacteria must be supported and replenished, too.
Vitamins and minerals can 100% be replaced by supplements, but not all phytonutrients and fiber can. If you take cheap worthless forms of vitamins or minerals when better forms are available, that's on you.
Yes, the microbiotia need feeding, mainly via fiber. They synthesize whatever else they need on their own.
Is there some sort of readily available system/metric/standard that a normal consumer can use to evaluate the bio-absorbability in a bottle of vitamins? I know some of them have higher-than-recommended FDA daily values, presumably to make up for the availability, but... as with so much of the supplements industry, it all seems like mostly untrustworthy marketing?
Shouldn't it be possible to calculate (and label) dosage * absorbability of a particular source in pill form = effective dosage?
I don't know of any singular resource, but if you ask me here or in r[eddit]/FoodNerds about a specific vitamin or mineral, I will be happy to share what I know. You can message the mods there if you want with a specific question.
The FDA doesn't set the values, and be glad they don't because they're very corrupt in ways you wouldn't realize. If it were up to the FDA, every product that doesn't pay the FDA a bribe of $1 million for "certification" would be banned, and then everything would cost the consumer 10x. You would also then have to pay a useless licensed practitioner for the privilege of buying anything, typically at a dose that would be too low to improve health. The NIH ODS sets them, and you can read them at https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/
There is no standard because each vitamin and mineral is unique and special. There are some heuristics, but they only go so far. For example, an ideal dose is often (but not always) close to the average of the minimum and maximum limits.
And believe me when I say that I do my best to keep the cost as low as possible while keeping the quality good enough.
Thank you! I swear people are acting like one, no one has ever thought of this before, and two that whole foods and the ways we prepare them are magically ideally bioavailable to us like plants give a shit.
Is it the same for Vegetarian Omega 3?
No, you can't. Supplements often have either bad absorption or risk of overdose, because need to be associated with some other nutrient (fat, fiber, etc) or the absorption is regulated by something else.
If you're a reckless person who overdoses, or if you don't know a good form from a bad form, then your answer is no. If you are well informed and know how to safely seek effective products, then the answer is yes.
Like you don't even have to know all that much and the bar is crazy low. Even if your diet is absolute garbage it's unlikely you're actually deficient in anything.
I've just been accumulating daily supplements from dr recommendations over the years — the good fish oil for my dry eyes, b12 because I don't eat much meat, high-dose turmeric because mild jaw inflammation, d3 because I'm light sensitive and don't go out in the sun enough, and a women's multivitamin.
I don't really think about my diet at all outside of roughly total calories and haven't gotten a bad bloodwork yet.
P.S. For dry eyes, besides decent omega-3s, these also help me:
* Dry vitamin A: 6667 IU per day in the summer, and 10k IU per day in the winter. Test its blood level every two years.
* Taurine: 2g/day before bed.
* Vitamin D3: 4000-5000 IU per day to prevent further damage to tear glands due to subclinical autoimmune attacks. Test its blood level every year or two.
You cannot metabolize calories if you don’t have the nutrition that powers the enzymes that metabolize those calories and turn them into ATP.