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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I believe there are several things at play.
1: Fruit and vegetables come with a whole lot of other substances that are good for your health.
2: Fruit and vegetables are made up of a complex matrix which gets digested more slowly so that vitamins have more time to be absorbed.
3: Fruit and vegetables may offer combinations of nutrients that enhace absorption.
4: Research is limited. I think many vitamin studies look into the effect of only one or two vitamins at once. They will be given in high doses whereas all other nutrients will remain on a relatively low dosage (i.e. no supplementation at all). I think this skews research results as it could provoke a relative vitamin deficiency in some of the other non-supplemented vitamins. Thus, the studies might show that vitamins are bad for you when it’s really just poor study design.
5: Who knows who did most of the research? If the pharma industry financed most of the research, I daresay they would not find much good in vitamins. Similar things happened with milk and sugar.
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