Are Whole Food Supplements Better Than Synthetic?

Many people don’t get the nutrients their body needs daily through diet alone. For this reason, a large percentage of North Americans turn to supplements to fill the nutritional gaps. But the supplement world is full of overwhelming choice, so how does someone choose what is best?

First, we know that nutrients are best absorbed in their natural state, ideally from fresh, organic, unprocessed food. So when we are looking to supplement our diet, vitamins that come from whole food sources offer more benefits than those that are synthetically made.

Synthetic vitamins are isolated compounds created in a lab. They should not be dismissed as “bad,” because the body is still able to absorb and make use of these man-made nutrients. However, there is more to a whole food than simply the extracted vitamins and minerals. A natural food doesn’t offer us isolated vitamins, but rather a host of phytonutrients, enzymes, and more.

Whole food vitamins are produced by condensing, dehydrating, and concentrating fruit and vegetables into a powder, capsule, or tablet form. This means a whole food supplement includes all of the trace minerals and cofactors required for optimal absorption by the body. Whole food vitamins contain the entire matrix of bioactive compounds because they are made from real, living food.

So while synthetic vitamins can be beneficial in filling nutritional gaps, a whole food supplement gives you all the vibrant, vital energy of whole plants, and certainly your body will feel the difference.