After some preliminary research, I’ve found the consensus to be that you can’t replace fruits and vegetables with multi-vitamins and fiber supplements. But, I can’t find an adequate answer for why this is. What does the food offer that the vitamins don’t (aside from macronutrients that could be attained from foods other than fruits and vegetables)? It seems logical that they wouldn’t be interchangeable – just looking for a more specific answer.
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You can think of the digestive tract as a computer that has software. And it has different modes, different algorithms, for different foods. It will notice wether you eat meat or fruits and load different software modes accordingly. But it has never seen a pill in its millions of years of evolution. So the absorption is far from perfect and it basically does not know what to do with it, so we really do not know what happens to the pill or the vitamins during digestion. We can only measure levels in the blood. There are some benefits for people who can not eat certain foods, or maybe have an actual deficiency for whatever reason. But for most people it is better to go with the natural source.
edit: Also the bacteria on the natural food is often beneficial, as another answer pointed out.
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