is it really necessary?

[Guest]

must we take multi vits, vit c, efa's and others?

a lot of these tabs are high in strength, so how much would we have to eat to get them from our diet and what would we have to eat (detail where possible)?

i ask because i have tried all of the above and i dont know if they made any difference to my training and after a while i got to the point where i was randomly takin them instead of regularly.

is it better to invest ur money in more food rather than these supps i have mentioned?

chris

 

[stevie]

the simple answer is that they are necessary IF you are not getting them in your daily diet.
The supplements you list are essential, meaning that the body requires them for optimal functioning but is not able to produce them. Thus they must be obtained from your diet.
If you have taken them and noticed no difference, then there are two possibilities:
1)you obtain sufficient quantity of them in your daily diet in which case you do not need them.
2)you are not supplementing with optimal quantity/quality.

 

[Mindwraith]

Most of the vitamins you get come from milk and cheese, leafy greens like spinach, oats and wheat (bread or oat bran), and a variety of fruits. If you aren't eating a lot of those things then you'd have to supplement.

It's some people's opinion that supplements don't provide you with the same effectiveness as a good diet. I'm not so sure thats true. I can't stand spinach unless its tucked in a load of cheesy meat sauce and noodles. A lot of fruits tend to make my throat itch. So I don't tend to like them very much and thus don't eat them often. I'm convinced that vitamin supplements do the same thing, I've yet to see any real double blind tests and scientific proof that they don't.

 

[Aaron_F]

In terms of health vitamin and mineral supplements generally dont show as good a results as food based sources.
While they may be identical to food based items, there is a simple explanation for this. In food, vitamins are associated with other nutrients, phytochemicals nad the like.
If htere is a relationship between a high vitamin intake and health, its difficult to disceminate between the vitamin vs the food it came in.
It would be nice to say that a pill would beable to replace eating fruits and veges, but unfortunately at this stage we cant.