Why are vitamin pills not a replacement for a balanced diet?
In: Biology
Some people who can’t eat may be on enteral feeds (tube feeding), which essentially means they meet all their nutrition needs (carbs, fat, protein, vitamins, minerals) from a nutritional supplement drink/formula. Sometimes people can’t eat but also can’t be tube fed, so they require parenteral nutrition (IV nutrition). This basically means carbs, fat, protein, vitamins, and minerals are infused directly into their bloodstream. So yes, it is possible to live off of nutrition “supplements” – not necessarily vitamin pills like you asked about, but formulas and specially made mixtures.
For those of us who can eat, we also know that there are health benefits to eating “real” food that you can’t get from supplements. For example, eating a well-balanced diet will also provide fibre and phytonutrients, such as antioxidants. There is a lot that we still don’t understand about the thousands of compounds we find in fruits and vegetables beyond just vitamins and minerals, but we know that we don’t get the same health benefits when we isolate these compounds in pill form, compared to eating food as a whole with all the components they contain.
And let’s not forget that food isn’t just about nutrition! Eating foods that are satisfying to us and enjoying meals is also good for our health 🙂
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