Hi, I am soon going to be going travelling. I normally dont take any supplements except moringa powder which I see more as a food. But we are going travelling soon and I know my diet wont be that great. I'm thinking to take a multivitamin / mineral. But what I can buy locally where I live tends to have gelatin and artificial colourants. Can anyone recommend me the most natural kind of product to take that I could maybe order online? something not hugely expensive .....
many thanks...

I like vitamin code, the raw food whole food supplement company.

if your going for synthetic then the above is probably the best for a raw foodists needs. Although im not keen on synthetic supplements myself.

Id prefer to make a blend of nutrient rich herbs such as nettle, alfalfa, amla berry, wheatgrass, barleygrass, spirulina and chlorella. That way you get the benefits that these herbs and superfoods also have aswell as wholefood nutrition.

They make whole food raw vits, no? They all say "food source" on them.

Sorry i meant the blend for myself is whole food raw vits/minerals/aminos/phytos.

The vitamin code products i got samples of a while back some of the ingredients were whole food source whilst the others were synthetic by the looks of it. I can never find much information on there ingredients or the processes such as there raw b12 product which so far i haven't been able to find if it is truly raw and if so the process.

I know they use amla for the vitamin C portion which is good and has many benefits over just vitamin C such as raising SOD etc. But none of the other ingredients are listed and some of the names listed are the synthetic variants by the looks of it. Still much better than your average multi-vitamin/mineral though by far.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2011 01:22PM by powerlifer.

Good for travel anyhow. Though when I was pregnant with my son and travelling I took green powder, bee pollen and hemp seed oil everywhere and would get juice in a bottle and shake myself up a "smoothie" very day. You have to have a fridge for the hemp seed oil though, unless you take it in capsules which is pricey and adds the ingredients of whatever the capsule is made of. And I don't eat bee stuff anymore.

Nice one, im abit wary of taking powders and herbs with me when traveling these days, a year or so back i went off to spain twice to relax for a couple of weeks and the second time back customs stopped me and scanned my herbs, superfood powders, scanned the suitcase with the machine twice kind of put me off things.

Guess i got singled out as i was young and alone but still annoying.

I agree about the powders being good but its a bit harder to travel with....the vitamin code looks good although a bit low on zinc that I think I might be a bit deficient in...but is it safe or good to take over 1000% the recommended daily dose of various B vitamins?
thank you!!!!!

It depends id need to see the formula but high doses of vitamin B's especially singling out certain b vitamins can prevent uptake of other b vitamins which is a bad idea.

Which is why its also best to get from natural sources such as seaweeds, nettle leaf etc are good sources of b complex vitamins.

I like k lake algae, but I found some product called biosuperfood. i think that helped me study better last semester. Who knows if its just me thinking it would help that helped. I like spirulina also.

Watch that klamath lake algae it is one species of algae which has shown to be toxic, contains microcystins which are pretty toxic and can damage the liver upon other problems. It goes worse than that but im tired and need bed lol. I also read there is some compound that acts as a stimulant much in the same way cocaine does so again not good.

Spirulina or chlorella are better choices.

Wow, didn't know that about kla. It seems like it shouldn't be on the market if there are those questions about it.

If you could suggest one product with the greens and the fruits and everything else you like to get, which product would you recommend?

februarygirl

I saw one brand rainbow light that had a good value pack of 150 including probiotic but they make either mens or womens - the only difference I can see is that the mens one contains some saw palmetto and tomato extract - would there be any problem in a women taking a low dose of saw palmetto - then we can just get one bottle for both?
I also saw a product called ALIVE which has a lot of natural things in it and not too expensive but it has titanium dioxide colour - is there any problem with that?
I agree with powders being good but I am travelling so its not that practical for me to cart around a lot of powders or affordable either, although i'll be taking some moringa that I can buy locally.

Personally there isn't really many complete products on the market i like so i blend my own, much cheaper also.

As always these are supplements to an already good diet, i mix a variety of green powders such as wheatrgrass, barley grass, chlorella, spirulina, nettle leaf, alfalfa and a little seaweed, amla berry and pine pollen as a green/multi-vitamin/mineral with alot of benefits.

The complete green formulas etc are all too over priced to be worth it.

for a synthetic multivitamin i would probably go with Solgar but i use GNC Mega Men myself because there was a GNC store close to me

for a whole food supplement i use Vitamineral Green by Healthforce

GNC and Solgar both use some questionable fillers so i would of course prefer to go the whole food way if possible. When i look at synthetic multivitamin however my main concern is how much vitamins are in there. if everything is 100% that is a BAD vitamin to me. a good formula will have about half the ingredients at 100% and some others much much higher at 300%, 500% or even as much as 1500%.

also in the better formulas one serving size is not a single pill but 2, 3 sometimes even 4 pills. that's because it is impossible to physically fit all the nutrition you need into a single pill. if the supplement is a 1 pill a day type it is guaranteed to skimp on something.

because FDA has artificially low recommended doses for most vitamins. if everything is only 100% that means you are getting just the bare minimum to survive - not thrive.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2011 06:05PM by proteus.

Well, you ARE supposed to actually eat some food too. I don't think a vitamin should have 100% of Anything except maybe D3 and B12. Not the rest of it though, it's just supposed to "supplement" the diet. Too much of anything is not a good thing.

I think the high amounts of the vitamins might serve as a stimulant, otherwise people might not feel any difference and think its not working. But if something jolts your body like that, it might be toxic. I have heard others say the high doses are because isolated vitamins are bioavailable like how it is in real food.

over the years I found that just really good produce and perhaps 'superfoods' do the best.

Most dont act as a stimulant as most dont have CNS stimulant properties but i see more and more of these multi formulas containing things like green tea which does contain caffeine.

But there is no reason why a multi should include 25,000 of vitamin A, its bad enough water soluble vitamins which you pee out but fat soluble you dont and that leads to problems.

Do vitamin supplements work?

If your body works well and is able to absorb the nutrients in vitamins, sure, they work. They are limited though, even the whole food sort, because they are missing things that the whole food would have. Nutrients sensitive to moisture level, etc. But they are supposed to act as a supplement, giving your body a bit of what may be missing in the daily diet. They are not meant to replace meals entirely.

IMHO, I don't believe they're much chop.. Like coco said, they aren't in the correct balance, and they can even prevent the absorption of naturally occuring nutrients in whole food.

I've read current peer reviewed journal articles which, according to the completed research, suggest that supplements can actually shorten your life. The only one that didn't was vitamin C; however, it didn't have any affect in the treatment of disease, or even as a preventative.

As long as your eating a variety, even if the quality isn't there so much, your gong to be ok.

Have a great holiday,
cheers, geo

when it comes to vitamin C i am using a pure powder ( 100% ascorbic acid, no fillers ) that i buy by the pound. i just take about 1/5th of a teaspoon and toss it in my smoothie - it improves the taste to boot. it works out to about 2,000% of vitamin C per smoothie.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2011 06:22AM by proteus.

you know there is a lot of room in dosing certain substances. for example when taking steroids you can take a double dose and get extra results, then you can double it again and get extra results again, and again and again.

of course you don't want to take any amount of steroids but the point is dose matters.

with fat soluble vitamins of course you have to be careful, but as i said FDA tends to be conservative with its recommended vitamin doses. i don't think you can get too much if you take a multivitamin from a reputable company and follow directions.

as far as getting vitamins and other nutrients from food - i think you should organize your diet in such a way that you get everything you need from food alone. and then you should put supplements on top of it to supercharge your diet. that's what i do. i try to get enough protein and vitamins from the diet and then i put protein and vitamin supplements on top of it.

i also think conventional guidelines for protein consumption are on the conservative side as well.

FDA isn't interested in your health. all it cares about is how to make out the nutrition free processed crap standard american food to look as if it isn't deficient. they will simply keep lowering their guideliens for various essential nutrients until these guidelines make potato chips and white bread look nutritious.

Sure they can work, say you have low levels of magnesium, it would take ages to increase to acceptable levels via diet.

ascorbic acid is very unstable much like all synthetic vitamin C's, you'd be better off adding amla, acerola, rosehips etc. They all have additional benefits plus they contain the synergistic bioflavonoids that aid vitamin C's absorption.

The body can produce most of these vitamins by processing water, air, and other nutrients, there is not an issue with lack of nutrients or vitamins, the big issue is assimilation, we are not nurtured by what we eat but by what we can assimilate, for most the digestive systems from years of abuse cannot process nutrients, the solution is to work on that not on buying more vitamins. If we are very healthy, we should survive on local foods during travels

Well partially true but the body really doesn't process these nutrients from water or air. We get them from our diet and in most cases this suffices.

Taking supplements While working on digestion is a smart thing to do. They are not mutually exclusive, it's a good idea to nutritionally support the body while cleaning it out, those things go hand in hand.
Water hydrates, air oxygenates, food nourishes. They all do their own separate jobs. I've read some of the breatharian stuff too but I'm not buying into it at all.

Why not nutritionally support the body with real food while cleaning out? Juices and fruits are easier to assimilate than some dry supplements. I do not believe that breatharianism works.

Our definition of supplements may not be quite the same. I use green powders, whole food vitamin/minerals, essential fatty acids, liquid B12 and D3, herbs, etc. I'm not talking about synthetic tablets though I don't think those are entirely ineffective either.
anyhow, we can agree to disagree. This thread was asking for advice about supplements, not asking to be told not to take them.