"Food" Vitamins vs regular OTC Vitamins

Flamel

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A friend is trying to explain to me why I should take a "food" vitamin rather than a regular OTC multivitamin. She said that a vitamin that comes from food rather than cooked up in the lab is better. I think she's saying that these food vitamins are real food crushed down into a tiny pill. She sent me to a website (organicpharmany.org) to look at a food vitamin daily pill. Here's the blurb:

DailyFood's® One Daily™ is formulated with 100% FoodState® nutrients. FoodState® nutrients have the inherent benefits of Food Factors™, known as Protein Chaperones™. Protein Chaperones™ contain plant intelligence necessary for all nutrient delivery and utilization. These nutrients have potencies as found in FOOD, which facilitates utilization and reduces potential for side-effects. Experience the difference 100% FoodState® nutrition can make.*

I couldn't any explanations of what most of the trademarked language means on that site, but I did find some info at: radiantlife.net (choose Products from menu).

FOODSTATE NUTRIENTS are supplemental nutrition, delivered in a matrix of Vital Food Factors such as carbohydrates, proteins, phytonutrients and thousands of other components that compose food. These Vital Food Factors create enhanced absorption and utilization through a naturally occurring biochemical delivery system that transports nutrients to cells. This superior delivery system is not found in ordinary vitamin and mineral supplements. These whole food concentrates are produced by two unique processes: Growth and Nutrient Activation. The result is a nutrient-dense, highly bioavailable complex matrix of proteins, carbohydrates, dietary fiber, enzymes, active bioflavonoids and thousands of bio-active phyto-chemicals. The natural nutrients found in whole foods are in all of our formulations.

Page 2 on the site uses electron microscope pictures of their vitamins and OTC vitamins to show that theirs are rounder and smaller, and therefore better. Page 3 explains some of their special terms. And there's more on page 4-6. Here's the conclusion from page 3:

Sufficient whole food to meet the body's vital energy needs is the first nutritional priority. The amount of available vital energy to the human physiology is crucial for maintaining the quality of life. This energy requirement is equal to the amount of available whole food needed to yield the energy required to accomplish all voluntary and involuntary activities of the body. The regular Free-State nutrients, similar to refined foods, are missing the Vital Food Factors needed for transportation and utilization within the body. Without these naturally occurring Co-factors the body must use its vital energy reserves to convert regular "natural" vitamins into a usable form.

As the food energy made available to the body decreases, its own substance is broken down and utilized to perform basic functions. The law of energy conservation is one of the important laws of nature. The body does not make allowances for wasted energy. Whenever the body can conserve energy it will do so. The advantage of providing Food and FoodState nutrients is that the nutrients are in a form requiring no changes, therefore saving vital energy.

When nutrients are whole, with naturally occurring complete proteins and other phyto-nutrients, they are in a form that is readily used by the human physiology. The Vital Food Factors that are essential for carrying out this function are the Protein Chaperones. The body's processing of the nutrients does not require the use of vital energy because Food and FoodState nutrients contain these necessary protein chaperones. (see ref. 20)
***
So, what the heck is going on? What's really in these pills? Are they anything other than Centrum multivitamins with a different label? Can anyone point me in the direction of some info on this?

Thanks,
Flamel
 
It's money you don't need to spend. With a good diet you don't need to take any multivitamins.

Quackwatch is a great resource: Vitamins

The gist is that most of such alternative medicine sites make the same exaggerated claims that they've done for centuries. You can tell organicpharmacy.org is 'alternative' because they advertise homeopathy, for which I'll direct you to the skepticwiki.
 
Sounds like bovine fecal material to me.

From the first paragraph I thought it was going to be "eat food rather than vitamin pills" which I would heartily endorse. But no. It's just marketing crap.
 
Vitamins are vitamins. If they have the same formula and structure they are the same thing. This sounds like someone taking the issue of food vs. pills and trying to claim that their pills are really food. Which is complete and utter BS.
 
Cuddles said:
Vitamins are vitamins. If they have the same formula and structure they are the same thing. This sounds like someone taking the issue of food vs. pills and trying to claim that their pills are really food. Which is complete and utter BS.
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Exactly, the scam quoted in the OP is a slight twist on the "naturalist" fallacy, I suspect that they'll also be selling "natural" salt as well, to replace that nasty, dangerous, artificially made sodium chloride which you get elsewhere.
 
brodski said:
Exactly, the scam quoted in the OP is a slight twist on the "naturalist" fallacy, I suspect that they'll also be selling "natural" salt as well, to replace that nasty, dangerous, artificially made sodium chloride which you get elsewhere.
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I have heard of someone objecting to sodium bicarbonate as an unnessacary chemical and that is shouldn't be in "Natural" products.
 
ponderingturtle said:
I have heard of someone objecting to sodium bicarbonate as an unnessacary chemical and that is shouldn't be in "Natural" products.
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My mother used to teach chemistry at secondary school, the first practical experiment the kids had to do involved sodium chloride, one of the kids refused to have anything to do with "dangerous chemicals like that!" telling the pupil that it was just table salt did no good whatsoever, although the rest of the class had a bit of a laugh. It's a good job she didn’t refer to the water the salt was dissolved in as "hydric acid".
 
As far as i know, vitamin pills haven't been proven to have any beneficial effect on their takers....(maybe pregnant women are an exception?)

indeed, one could hypothosise that they were in fact detrimental - insofar as someone taking regular vitamin pills might be less likely to eat their brocolli :D
 
Okay, there's a little bit of real information there but not much. Vitamins that occur naturally in food are thought to be more useful to the body than those that are manufactured chimically. Forget how much Vitamin E is in the pill; how much actually gets into your body?

But that's where scientific knowledge basically stops. There are almost no proper studies about which form of Vitamin A or C or whatever is best absorbed by the body. And there won't be because, well, there's no money in it. You can't patent a vitamin.

The best advice is to depend on a good diet for your vitamin and mineral needs. If you really want, go to Walgreens and get the cheapest multimineral/multivitamin they sell and take one with dinner. There's no reason to do more.
 
andyandy said:
As far as i know, vitamin pills haven't been proven to have any beneficial effect on their takers....(maybe pregnant women are an exception?)

indeed, one could hypothosise that they were in fact detrimental - insofar as someone taking regular vitamin pills might be less likely to eat their brocolli :D
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Well anyone with a vitamin deficency for some reason it would help. It has to do with what percentage of the people can eat a ballanced diet and have a deficency(not a clue but I am sure it can happen). But this is focudes individual vitamins. Anemia can also be a problem for some people so they should eat much more red meat?

General multivitamins might help for many of these people even if they contain many things that they don't need. And the dosages of them are unlikely to be harmful as vitamins tend to need quite a bit to take enough to be toxic.

As for more being better of some, well there is no academic consensus ammoung the profeshionals so saying either way is not something anyone can do strongly.
 
Here are some links; I'm not sure they are for the exact MegaFood product.

http://www.growco.us/gc_protocolyeast.html

https://www.natures-own.co.uk/acatalog/Quality.html

http://www.foodstate.co.za/what.html

http://www.radiantlife.net/radiant-life.html?http://www.radiantlife.net/products-5.html

This is the MegaFood product brochure:
http://www.affordable-megafood.com/DF_product_guide.pdf

As far as I can tell, the idea of food state or food-grown nutrients is that yeast is grown (on molasses or other energy source, plus whatever else is needed for yeast growth). At some point, additional vitamins and minerals are incorporated into the mix. Then the vat contents are harvested, the yeast are split/killed/digested in some way, the product is dried and prepared as a powder.

What I am not clear about is exactly what happens to the additional nutrients added to the yeast culture. The hype is that the yeast cells take them up and bind them to useful protein molecules. But it also seems possible that either they are not taken up at all, and just get dried as part of the yeast-drying process of the medium, or else they get taken up in a way that swells the cell, but they are not incorporated into the yeast.
Part of the vitamins and minerals come from the actual yeast. Part are added to the yeast, probably as standard OTC type synthetic vitamins and minerals. The questions are whether they actually get bound to the yeast protein, and if so, does it make any difference in absorbance. The yeast proteins are going to get digested in the gut.

MegaFood seems hyped on Hydrilla, some kind of rooted green algae from South Carolina and Florida, so it might be possible that they use that algae in the same way that yeast is used in the above descriptions. One site also used the bacteria in yogurt for this approach. MegaFoods says that 'protein chaperones' are used as 'plant intelligence' to help direct the vitamins to their correct locations. I think this is wrong; some minerals do have protein carriers that take them from the gut to the cells (e.g. transferrin) -the body supplies them. I don't think we need 'plant intelligence' to do this. Aside from the phrase 'plant intelligence' being really annoying, yeast are not plants.

The fact that the 'food' in these is actually yeast is kept pretty quiet on most of the sites.
 
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After reading something by Linus Pauling years ago, I took vitamin C for a while, but haven't taken any since. A sensible, well-balanced diet is best I think and I'd rather spend the money on good trainers to go walking in!
 
Loss Leader said:
Okay, there's a little bit of real information there but not much. Vitamins that occur naturally in food are thought to be more useful to the body than those that are manufactured chimically. Forget how much Vitamin E is in the pill; how much actually gets into your body?

But that's where scientific knowledge basically stops. There are almost no proper studies about which form of Vitamin A or C or whatever is best absorbed by the body. And there won't be because, well, there's no money in it. You can't patent a vitamin.
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Not true. Drug companies may well not fund such research, but basic medical and nutritional research like that is on-going in universities. Mostly funded by government grants.

Anyway, vitamins in food are generally held to be better because there's a cocktail of nutrients and bulk all together, some of which aid absorbtion, and some of which are just valuable in their own right. It's not because of their chemical structure varying from the synthetic.
 
Some synthetic vitamins are not the same compounds as their naturally ocurring counterparts.
 
Splossy said:
Some synthetic vitamins are not the same compounds as their naturally ocurring counterparts.
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Not nessacarily, there can be more than one form of a vitamin and they might synthisize or extract one form over another. But it is not that the synthetic ones wouldn't be found in nature, there can be more than one thing refered to as vitamin X
 
So is the dl-alpha tocopherol form of Vitamin E found in natural foods then?
 
cajela said:
Not true. Drug companies may well not fund such research, but basic medical and nutritional research like that is on-going in universities. Mostly funded by government grants.

Anyway, vitamins in food are generally held to be better because there's a cocktail of nutrients and bulk all together, some of which aid absorbtion, and some of which are just valuable in their own right. It's not because of their chemical structure varying from the synthetic.
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Precisely. Food is better than vitamins because it contains other things that we need as well, probably including things we haven't identified yet. If all we got from food was vitamins then pills would be just as good, but this is clearly nonsense. The OP seems to be claiming that because food is better than just taking vitamins, their vitamins must be better, rather than just assuming there is something other than vitamins. Kind of silly really, but sadly some people seem to believe it.
 
Thanks for all the info. I never had any intention of buying the "food" vitamins. I was trying to figure out what they were and whether there was anything legitimate behind all the trademarks. I'm following up on the links and info to get ready for my next conversation with my friend.
 
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