Getting my A, B, and C's - Have multivitamins become a basic food group?

An article about Ottawa's top chefs said potatoes have lost 60 percent of vitamin C since the 1960's. One of the commentators is a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu. I take a multivitamin.

I would recommend a powder multi-vitamin called Multi-Force by Prairie Naturals. As a vegetarian, who eats no junk food and a lot of greens, I still do not get my recommended dosage of vitamins thus the Multi-Force (also contains Minerals), which I mix in a blender with two scoops of Soy and/or Whey protein, Udo's essential oils, some pineapple juice, some soy yogurt and some fresh fruit (usually a banana for maximum potassium). This combination is recommended for active people, as the Multi-Force contains 21g of carbohydrates, which are essential for working out.

One of these shakes a day and I feel great the entire day, have much more energy and feel healthy physically.

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thanks for the tip! i will have to investigate...i forgot to mention i'm a student with little income to spare...

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Any time malex. I think I paid about 25 dollars for a decent sized jug of the Multi-Force. It probably will last about 3 - 4 weeks at one scoop a day. Much cheaper than buying all of the vitamins in pill form separately. That costs far too much.

This one has no animal products. The reason I am using whey is because too much soy is not a good thing. The only other option is soy.

Hahaha. That's funny about the parents.

Weird though how I still hear people say using Creatine is okay and natural. Yes our bodies produce creatine through eating meat but taking creatine in powder form to bulk up seems like cheating to me. Plus it's mainly water retention so I'm not sure what the point is really. Have you heard of this?

Thanks for that link 500. Looks like a good source.

I've heard of the creatine, I tried it when I tried the whey and had the same issue with my parents. A lot of studies have found whey/creatine is the most effective bbing combination. Right now, I wouldn't dream of using creatine because my goal is to cut as I'm hoping to one-up what I did last summer by doing a triathlon this coming summer. However, when I bought the creatine, I was trying to build up muscle. It... really seemed to work. I was doing more reps at the same weight.

I think the extra water helps you lift more, but once you've lifted more you've lifted more and so you build up more strength. If I ever tried again (I'm moving out in the fall), I'll try with the whole "loading-cycling" procedure.

[url=http://www.charlespoliquin.com/members/modules.php?name=News&file=articl... tips to finding a better multi-vitamin/mineral supplement[/url] by Charles Poliquin

Charles is a strength training coach and has trained Olympic medalists in over ten different sports. He's from Ottawa.

My gym is full of guys taking supplements. The atheletic, sports performance, or muscle building supplement industry is very big and preys upon body image. I wonder if the steroids or HGH aren't hidden in the supplement itself.

There's many a pro level athelete (Shawne Merriman being most recent) who claim "tainted" supplements as a reason they've failed performance enhancing drug tests. Maybe they aren't all lying.

I bike, kayak, canoe, run, and lift weights while working as a manual labourer. I don't take supplements but I really enjoy eating.

The presence of vitamins and supplements is, to me, indicative of the awful state of the food industry.

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There's many a pro level athelete (Shawne Merriman being most recent) who claim "tainted" supplements as a reason they've failed performance enhancing drug tests. Maybe they aren't all lying.

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Yeah, I think it's possible. Sometimes Health Canada does inspections of "traditional" medicines being sold in downtown Toronto, and they find them containing real pharmaceuticals, like warfarin, furosemide, antibiotics, etc. If I were an elite-level athlete, I'd try to do it with diet only, other than multivitamins manufactured in Canada. I'd avoid imported supplements at all costs.

Farmpunk, what's your opinion of organic produce/meats? Better? A scam? I have sometimes bought them, but it makes me uneasy to spend all this money when often I can't tell the difference. I've noticed the organic meats taste a lot better, however. But with something like carrots, well, a carrot's a carrot.

Mechanized farming methods use fertilizers to supplement the soil instead of leaving fields to fallow before replanting again. So what's the difference between supplementing soil and diet with supplements ?

Good question. Fertilizers simply speed up the natural process. The supplements and vitamins I see being used, sold, and touted, are for convienience, or seem to be intended to outsmart nature: bigger, faster, stronger, easier. Eat what you want and lose weight with this pill. Vitamin E prolongs life.

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Being honest, picky eaters make me cringe.

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I don't consider being a 'picky eater' a bad thing. After all, isn't that what you are advocating? Picky eating? Jesus what is with the people who have issues with other people's food intake? I eat what is healthy for me. Not to please you or other vegan\vegetarian haters. Meat is NOT healthy, especially the crap bought at grocery stores. No amount of propaganda from anyone is going to convince me eating anything without first doing research and deciding what is best FOR ME is an issue they need to be concerned with.

You don't see or hear me deriding meat eaters for all their shitty choices in food do you? How about I start in on people who eat eggs, and fast foods, and fill their bodies up with junk food.

What I put in my body is my business. I'll be 42 next year and I can guarantee you my health is better than a lot of people half my age.

I'm with Sineed. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear enough. I wasn't slamming vegans\vegetarians.

The problem I have is when people complain about food and then turn their noses up at what's availible. If a person commits themselves to a local diet (and they should), then they are going to have to become less persnickity about what they eat. Simple as that. Know what grows in your region and start forming your food choices there.

Yeah, I try to buy locally when I can, too. If enough of us do this, stores will be motivated to stock local produce out of economic self-interest.

Doesn't it bug you when at the height of apple season, next to all the gorgeous Ontario apples, supermarkets will have huge bins of apples from, say, China? I'm trying to educate my kids to see what's wrong with this. Maybe local food producers could go into the schools and talk to the kids, like the way the schools bring in policemen and firemen to talk about safety. And kids can learn about the economic and environmental costs of transporting food long distances, for instance.

Local stores do carry lots of local stuff during season (in my area of Toronto).

But it is hard to find local green vegs,tomatoes, etc in February. Also, local orange juice in Ontario?

So what's wrong with Florida orange juice.

Actually, I have the feeling I might be missing the point here, but for most stuff (food and otherwise) I try to buy local, and if I can't then US then elsewhere.

[ 20 February 2007: Message edited by: oreobw ]

The idea is that a person should attempt to eat the food of your region, that CAN be grown locally, ahead of anything else, year round. I know the Ontario market best, so that's where I'll place my examples.

Winter\February veggie eating, and what should be availible "fresh": sweet potatoes, cabbage of different types and hues, potatoes, carrots, onions, squash... Roots crops, easily stored, likely with little refridgeration. I grow and eat a long storage cabbage that gets as big as bowling balls and keeps for six months or better. The outside layers might get mucky but they peel off easily. I also eat my own red onions until spring. I should grow my own carrots and sweet potatoes, and potatoes, but don't. I do freeze and preserve all kinds of food that isn't locally availible in the winter. Making preserves is a lost art, and it's very simple.

I do not buy hot house tomatoes. They taste like shit, for one thing, in comparison to the real outdoor deal, and growing tomatoes in a greenhouse in the winter does not make sense to me.

Eat locally, eat seasonally, buy whole foods. In southern Ontario, we are, weather permitting, only a couple months away from asparagus season. Follow the natural cycles of what's growing in your backyard (literally, or locally) and you'll be very surprised at the variety.

The reasons why people should concentrate on these types of eating patterns is simple, when you think about it. Suffice it to say, for now, that the Cali produce in our grocery stores (or the Washington state apples that drive me insane) are sold at a cost that does not reflec the true cost of getting that item into your grocery bag. If you're on the west coast, Cali produce makes sense. Cali produce in Toronto does not.

Of course, that's just vegetables. In a true seasonal, local arrangement, a lot of nutrition would come from meat. Wintertime being the slaughter season for pork and beef. But, as the original post reminds us, there's often times not a lot of nutrition in the food we eat. A problem I believe is exaggerated in meat production.

500-A,

Labour not cheap in Cali? Not to be an enourmous dick, but you have to be kidding. Big agriculture, including the organic operations, in Cali is based almost entirely upon the modern day version of slave labour in the US: illegal Mexicans.

Even grown in Ontario produce is subject to a version of this. The migrant worker programs. 20 thousand of them in ag last year, I believe, with many more coming to many industries across the board very soon. Who's outsmarting whom here?

US ag is subsidized, across the board, and is likely tied in with trucking-shipping business. Only so much mixed lettuce can fit into a transport. How much does it cost to get that produce to Toronto, say, or Montreal, in diesel alone? Not counting the cost of the driver's salary? Plus the basic production cost of the produce itself.

F-A, in the end I suspect there is a lot of reasons why Cali produce turns up in Ontario supermarkets. The reasons stretch from the consumer to the government policies to the production methods. There are no easy answers. But the easiest answer I can give anyone is to simply think about what they're consuming, where it comes from, why they're eating it. Local and seasonal is a step beyond that idea which I'm not sure many people are going to follow, or give merit to.

Do we have a free market or a controlled market? As far as agriculture goes, I wish I knew.

There are many good Canadian made multivitamins (Prairie Naturals, Trophic, Flora, Natural Factors) on the market available at natural food stores. Choose a medium dose(maximum 25 mg. of B vitamins) multi without iron. Take it with meals once or twice a day. Men do not need supplemental iron and women only need iron if blood tests show they do. If a woman needs iron it should be taken on its own away from other supplements. Stargazer has a good recipe for a morning shake that's better than simply adding a pill.

On another tangent, and because I don't know exactly where to put this, someone's advertising a disgusting-looking "Angus Burger" on teevee, and looking at that awful greasy thing is enough to put me off meat for a week. It's about as bad as anything from Carl's Jr. south of the border.

[url=http://www.standard-freeholder.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2280515]Vitamin C research called "hog wash"[/url] Gifford-Jones

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Fact No. 1-- Dr. Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel Prize winner reported that humans, unlike animals, do not produce vitamin C. Vitamin C is needed to manufacture collagen, the mortar that holds cells together. Without good collagen, coronary artery vessels develop stress fractures and set the stage for fatal blood clots. Just like buildings collapse with faulty mortar.

Fact No. 2-- Dr. William Stebhens, professor of pathology at Wellington University in New Zealand, agreed that Pauling was right. That it was mechanical stress on coronary arteries that triggered heart attack.

Fact No. 3 -- Researchers at Ulleval University Hospital in Norway reported a study that vitamin C in fruits and berries was associated with decreased atherosclerosis in carotid arteries. So if small amounts of vitamin C decrease hardening of arteries, what would larger amounts do?

Fact No. 4-- Dr. Sydney Bush, a distinguished professor of optometry in England, took pictures of retinal arteries, prescribed large doses of vitamin C and a year later took more photos. The latter showed that high doses of vitamin C, along with the amino acid lysine, reversed hardening of arteries.

Fact No. 5 -- Critics should reflect on why humans get heart attacks and animals do not. Goats manufacture 13,000 mg of C daily and increase it to 100,000 mg if ill. Yet health authorities claim humans only need 60 mg daily! This amount keeps us from getting scurvy, but does not protect us from heart attack.