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Why should I take nutritional supplements? Can’t I just eat healthy, exercise, drink plenty of water, etc.? A fair question. After all, quality nutritional supplements are not cheap. Let’s look at the arguments for taking nutritional supplements in addition to a healthy lifestyle.

Argument #1: Our foods no longer contain the nutrition they should

Due to modern processing and farming methods, foods that should be high in certain nutrients no longer are. For example, the tomato is an excellent source of phytonutrients, specifically, lycopene. But when you buy a tomato from the grocery store, there is little to no lycopene or other nutrients left in it. The tomato was likely grown on nutrient depleted soil, fertilized and sprayed with toxic chemicals, picked green, then gassed to turn it red. Little wonder it has no nutrition value left!

Another culprit in the nutrition depletion of foods is our food cooking and preparation. Even if you could by some magic acquire a nutrient rich tomato, cooking or storing the tomato will destroy most of the nutrients. For example, studies have shown that phytonutrients begin breaking down less than 24 hours after the vegetable was picked!

Of course, there are many other factors contributing to the poor nutrient content of our foods: breeding, GMOs, storage, etc, etc. Once you consider all of the factors causing the poor nutrient content in our food, it becomes quite logical to take supplements to replace these nutrients.

Argument #2: We no longer eat the right foods

If you eat a 100% organic, fresh diet, you’re a long ways ahead of the rest of us. Of course, the foods you’re eating are still nutrient depleted, as we saw above.

But for the rest of us, we need to supplement our diets also because we’re just not eating the foods we should. Currently, french fries are the most consumed vegetable in the United States. We’re just not getting the nutrients we need!

Argument #3: Environmental stress necessitates nutritional supplements

The Los Angeles Times ran an article last year revealing a startling finding: scientists announced that by the time a child born in LA was 2 weeks old, he had already been exposed to more toxins than would be acceptable for his entire life! While we don’t all live in Los Angeles, we’re all subject to environmental stress that puts extra burden on our immune systems. Even our drinking water has chemicals and toxins in it.

The best way to counter the stress on your body’s health caused by all of these toxins and such is to support your body with proper nutrition. Since our foods are nutrient depleted, the only way to properly support your health is through nutritional supplements.

Argument #4: Nutritional supplements allow us to benefit from nutrient rich foods around the world.

Even if our foods weren’t nutrient depleted and our environment wasn’t toxic, nutritional supplements would still have benefit. They allow us to benefit from plants and nutrient rich foods found around the world that otherwise we would be unable to benefit from. Good examples would be the goji berry from China, the Australian bush plum, and many others.

Do you want optimal health? The only way to properly support your body’s health is to take quality nutritional supplements.

Reading and Understanding Food Nutrition Value

When you go to the supermarket to shop for food, odds are you noticed that there was a listing of nutrients and ingredients on the back of the food package and wondered exactly what the point of that was. It turns out that some time ago the United States government realized that people were eating improperly because they likely didn’t understand what exactly was in the food they were eating. Not knowing calories, fat contents and other nutrient values in food can lead to eating too much of a certain nutrient or other compound. This can lead to health problems down the road, which is why you have to understand food nutrition value.

What Food Nutrition Value Measures

Food nutrition value measures raw food nutrition, which is the amount of nutrients given to the body from a given serving of food. Nutritional value is measured in terms of a percentage, meaning how much of a mparticluar nutrient your body getws from eating one serving of a given food. For example a slie of meat might give 40% of a peson’s daily value for protein. The food nutrition value is based on a person’s daily calorie intake. Every nutrient except for water has a certain amount of calores per gram, and all these add up to a full day’s worth of calorie consumption. There are generally two listings on a food nutrition value – one for 2000 calories and one for 2500.

2000 calories per day is the average adult human intake, meaning that It takes into account base metabolic rate and a reasonable amount of extra activity. The more you exercise, the more calories will be necessary to keep the body running, because more muscle tissues use more calories. Generally, people who are more active require at least 2500 calories per day. Men require more than women on average as well.

The best way to make use of knowing food nutrition value on the packaging is to mentally calculate how much of that food you could eat to get your recommended daily allowance of the most abundant nutrient. For most people, they look at the fat content first, and this may or may not be the wisest. After all, there are other nutrients than fat. You should look at vitamin A and C content in fruit or vegetable products especially. As a rule, you should be able to eat three servings of a given food at least and still be wihin your allotment of nutrients and calories, and make sure there’s a balance between calories and nutrients.