MCVitamins News

Your Nutritional Education Site

1. How to Know What Vitamins Are Best for You
2. A Low Animal Meat Diet?
3. Summer Health
4. Scientists Admit -- Sun Exposure Benefits Outweigh Risks

Most of the supplements on the shelves of health-food shops, drug stores and supermarkets contain “vitamins” that are man-made chemicals and “minerals” that are ground up rocks or mineral salts.

For example, most of the “vitamin C” sold in the US is ascorbic acid. This is a man-made chemical found nowhere in nature. There is no ascorbic acid in an orange, tomato or broccoli, or any fresh fruit or vegetable.

Ascorbic acid is manufactured in chemical plants by applying heat and pressure and additional chemicals to glucose (sugar), which converts the glucose to ascorbic acid. Not exactly like drinking orange juice, is it?

Ascorbic acid, being a chemical, isn’t absorbed or utilized the same way as food, and can often upset the stomach and digestive tract because it is an acid.

Vitamin C as it is found in nature is not acid - it is neutral! The acid taste in oranges and other citrus fruits is caused by their citric acid content.

Some companies will combine ascorbic acid with other chemicals to “buffer” it (make it less acid). This results in the “sodium ascorbate” or “calcium ascorbate” forms of ascorbic acid.

The bottom line is that these forms of “vitamin C” as well as most other “vitamins” you find on store shelves, are man-made chemicals. They are nothing like the true vitamins found in fresh fruits, vegetables and meat.

Now, let’s take a look at the “minerals” that are available on store shelves. For example, 70% of the “calcium” supplements sold in the US is calcium carbonate. This is factually finely ground up limestone rock, seashells or coral.

Only 4-7% of calcium carbonate taken as a supplement is actually absorbed by the body. Calcium carbonate is sometimes combined with other chemicals to try and improve this very poor absorption rate.

Regardless of the many different chemical forms calcium carbonate can get changed into, none of them are the same as the calcium found in a cabbage. Not even close!

These man-made chemical vitamins and ground up rock and mineral salts are called “USP” vitamins and minerals. (USP stands for United States Pharmacopoeia, which is a set of standards these vitamins and minerals are measured by.)

You may also come across vitamins and minerals that are labeled “food based”. These are USP vitamins and minerals that have been physically mixed in with alfalfa or soy or some other food.

This mixing with food is done in an attempt to increase the absorption of these chemicals and ground up rock into the body. That is why you often see “take with food” on their labels.

Occasionally these “food based” products will be labeled “organic”. This simply means that the alfalfa or soy the USP chemicals were mixed in with was grown organically.

Today you can find vitamins and minerals dissolved in liquid form. If the product is made with USP vitamins and minerals, you’re just pumping man-made chemicals into your body.

When you place a cabbage plant in the ground, its roots grow down into the soil and rocks, and they pull up from the ground calcium and other minerals in a form that you and I can’t eat.

Then through the normal life processes of the plant, it converts these minerals into a part of the plant body itself. Now the calcium has actually become a food we can eat, and our body knows how to absorb and utilize it.

To be effectively absorbed and utilized, vitamins and minerals must be the way they are in food.

For a list of Whole Food Supplements go to http://www.mcvitamins.com/Order_WSN.htm 

A Low Animal Product Diet

The book, Eat to Live, is apparently based on The China Study. The China Study overly focuses its attention on animal products as cancer and heart disease agents and recommends you cut way down; even eliminate them altogether. The author concluded that animal product consumption was the cause of the high incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer in the USA.

Let me present some other factual data to consider.

First, in the year 2000, the life expectancy in China was 71.5 years and 77.5 years in the USA. By the way, 42 countries have longer life expectancy than the USA. In other words, do we even want to follow the Chinese example fully here in our animal product consumption?

Secondly, the author assumes animal product consumption in the USA is the cause of our increased cardiovascular and cancer incidents. I'm not saying heavy animal consumption in the USA plays no part; contrary, there are many synthetic additives and genetically modified foods given to the animals in order to fatten them up for slaughter. Conclusively, most animal products are tainted. 

Consider these cogent (forcibly convincing) facts. Americans consume an excessive amount of sugar, highly refined foods, synthetic man-made toxins and we live in a country that has been bombarded with all sorts of chemicals for over a century. The average American comes into contact with 600 toxic chemicals a day. There are over 60,000 man-made chemicals in the environment. We are a country of many excesses. All these are high compared to China.

So I ask you - Is high meat consumption even the main thing we do in excess that is part of the disease process?

A specific seven-year study was done in Finland on 29,000 male smokers. The study was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (America's most respected medical journal) and by the National Cancer Institute in 1994. This study was done on two synthetic additives in the food system. It showed that animal products are certainly not the only, or even perhaps, not the main cause of cardiovascular disease and cancer. This study proved that synthetic vitamin E (dl-alpha tocopherol) increased stroke and heart attack by 8 percent compared to the control group that got a placebo. The synthetic beta carotene (a precursor to vitamin A) group had an 18 percent increase in lung cancer compared to the control. So, here we have synthetic products causing heart disease and cancer. 

Vitamin E is now often used as an antioxidant in foods. Are they using real vitamin E (d-alpha tocopherol) or the synthetic (dl-alpha tocopherol)? The "L" form of tocopherol is very rare in nature. It is synthetic (man-made) and is a problem for the body to metabolize.

Organic and grass fed animal products provide an appropriate fat profile in the food and it is more or less free of toxins. Toxins concentrate in the fatty tissues of the animal when present in their food or air.

Daily protein intake should range from 45 to 75 grams depending on ones size and physical activity level. There are food tables which tell how much protein is found in different foods. Animal products are the most concentrated protein foods. Enjoy good healthy eating. 

Dr. Mike Spearman
Spearman Better Health Center
1279 N. Berendo St.
Los Angeles, CA. 90029
(323) 663-1066 

email: drmikess@yahoo.com  
www.spearmanbetterhealth.com  

Summer Health

Sunburn, heat-related illness, what you can do.  See Summer Health Article 
http://www.mcvitamins.com/summer-health.htm  

Scientists Admit -- Sun Exposure Benefits Outweigh Risks

Moderate sun exposure offers more health benefits than risks, particularly for people who are deficient in vitamin D or who live in colder, northern latitudes, according to U.S. and Norwegian researchers.

See article on Sun Exposure 

To Your Health,

MCVitamins
www.mcvitamin.com