"so you want me to eat...SPINACH ?!!"
Julia Child famously remarked that "American are afraid of food." As a high profile chef and PBS cooking show host she was at the forefront of the on-going national debate about what is healthy to put on one's body and what is not, at a time when margarine was being pimped as healthier than butter.
As ready-to-eat foods have become increasingly popular, the debate has widened. In addition to what NOT to put in one's body we are told that we may be lacking in many key nutrients. Targets have been established for the intake of nutrients and when a person is found to be lacking in the intake of some of them, they may be encouraged to take supplements in pill form. As always, processed food manufacturers are keen to cover the packaging of their processed foods with heath claims and to add things to their foods that allow them to make these claims. For example orange juice is available with added calcium.
Supplements are a huge business as American spend more that $60 billion annually on pills and powders. The industry has grown so quickly that studies and regulators are just now catching up. The simple equation that says 'if a nutrient is good for me then more is better" makes sense to many and many people supplement their diet empirically.
Meanwhile recent studies are showing that many, by no means all, supplements are ineffective in delivering the promised nutrients to the body. In some cases this is because the nutrients are not bio-available and therefore not absorbed by the body. In other cases, artificial supplementation has been shown to be dangerous. Perhaps the best example of this is calcium supplementation.
Calcium supplementation seems like a good idea. No one wants hip fractures or osteoporosis so CW says that more calcium can help build denser, stronger bones. Many brands of orange juice offer versions with calcium supplementation. Putting aside for a moment the fact that the American diet is loaded with fructose (simple fruit sugars such as HFCS) and the easy absorption of fructose may stress the pancreas and add to body weight, orange juice with calcium added may seem like some kind of super food -- vitamin C, fiber, a little vitamin A and then the added calcium. What could be wrong with that ?
Researchers are answering that question and the answer is not good news.
An analysis involving 12,000 men published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that intakes of over 1,000 mg of supplemental calcium per day (from multivitamins or individual supplements) were associated with a 20% increase in the risk of death from CVD.
...
The Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institutes of Health (UK) has compiled a comprehensive review of the health risks associated with excess calcium, particularly from supplementation. (9) For example, daily supplementation of calcium at 1000 milligrams is associated with increased prostate cancer risk and an increase in kidney stones. (10) Additionally, a recent Swedish study reported a 40% higher risk of death among women with high calcium intakes (1400 mg and above), and a 157% higher risk of death if those women were taking a 500 mg calcium supplement daily, compared to women with moderate daily calcium intakes (600-1000 mg). (11) A Consumer Lab analysis found that many of the calcium supplements they analyzed failed quality testing, including lead contamination and mislabeled contents.
But how?
http://chriskresser.com/calcium-supplements-why-you-should-think-twice
I was visiting some friends and saw their father in his 80s, eating a bowl of Cheerios with non-fat milk EVERY morning for breakfast. The legendary cereal proudly proclaims that the "first ingredient" on the label is grains put a closer look will show you that the calories in these Cheerios are mostly coming from the brown sugar. A limited diet that his doctor has advised them to supplement with supplement pills. In other words, the doctor's advice for the limitation of processed food was supplements -- the most processed of processed foods.
Trying to be helpful without being annoying (notice I said "trying"
, I asked if he like to eat spinach. He has survived a couple of minor strokes and is slowing down verbally. He made that yuck face that 4 year-old would make so that's a "no." He's made it to 80 so surely he is doing something right and I left it alone but it got me thinking:
How did we get to a place where people put more faith in pills that may or may not be bio-available, that may do more harm than good and where the proven safe and bio-available nutrients of whole foods are seen as either not enough or not an option?
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