I’ve been told that a vitamin is a vitamin and to just get the cheapest brand
True I
F you are talking about pharmaceutical or synthetic vitamins. If you are looking at food based nutrients, that is like saying that all tomatoes are the same, that the tomato eaten fresh from one’s organic garden is not better, and won’t taste better than the tomato that was picked before it was ripe and reaches your table days or weeks later.
Food based vitamins are derived from plants, whose nutritional values depend on a number of factors; such as,
the soil the plant was grown in, whether pesticides or fungicides were used, freshness when manufactured, manufacturing processes that may either destroy or preserve nutritional values, and the effect of other components that some brands use to enhance taste, shelf life, appearance, etc.
In Northern California, on some fields west of Davis, Stephen Kaffka and his colleagues have been comparing organic and conventional tomatoes grown in neighboring plots. Its part of a UC Davis study dubbed the “Long-Term Research on Farming Systems Project,” which was begun in 1991 and is slated to last 100 years.
So far, the researchers have found that the organic tomatoes have almost double the concentration of two types of flavonoids — quercetin and kaempferol — which are considered to be healthful plant compounds with potent antioxidant activity. The 10-year mean levels of quercetin were 79 percent higher than those in conventional tomatoes, and levels of kaempferol were 97 percent higher.
Those nutrients are important. If they found that much difference in just those two, I am willing to bet that most of the other nutrients were present in higher amounts in the organic tomatoes. What about other foods? Might they not also have a better nutrient pattern if they are organic?
There are minimum standards that every vitamin manufacturer is supposed to meet. Those standards pertain to whether they are manufactured in sanitary conditions, (often they don’t meet that one), that what they claim on the label, is actually in the product. Independent laboratories have studied label claims and found discrepancies in many brands.
Consumers should be aware that there is no requirement that the vitamin is “biologically available”, or that the formulatio
n by a specific vitamin brand actually performs it’s function. There is no requirement to test and prove what most consumers assume to be true. We have had interesting conversations with plumbers and people who clean porta-potties or septic tanks. They offer proof that many vitamins are not “biologically available.” They tell us that they often can still read the brand name of the vitamin tablet that shows up when they empty the tanks. The supplements actually passed through the body completely intact.
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