The Foundation of Supplement Industry
Most of us that has ever interacted with these very words,
“trying to be healthier”
will probably be offered or bought some kind of supplement to help aid that.
Nowadays, we always hear the word supplement, especially in a gym environment. It is crazy how many brands are out there that are offering endless amount of supplements to people. For instance:
If you are a “health enthusiast”, you might be offered the ordinary omega 3s, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Multivitamin, DHA, beta-carotene, or others.
For you that are a “gym freak”, you will probably hear all of those above and creatine, bcaa, whey powder, fat burner, and others.
I, myself never thought to supplement my body until I got into the gym. I started to hear that you need this type of supplement before you workout and you need this after you work out. Honestly, I did not have any interest in supplementing at first but….
When you go to the gym and get told about all of these stuff on daily basis, it makes you want to try it. On top of that, the peopIe that are telling you about these things are jacked up with muscle. How CONVINCING?
I am sure most people have experience this or perhaps decides to buy them because these offers “fast result”.
But… does it though? Do we get fast result from it? Is it worth to supplement?
The Start of Supplement Industry
The supplement industry has been around for a long time. The main foundation behind this industry is to isolate only the important nutrients that we get from our food. This is so that, busy people can just eat these pills and get the needed nutrients for the day. Because if we lack of certain nutrients, our body might not function at its best. How nice of them?
This industry’s beliefs started to get famous in the 1980s and since then it has grown. To be exact, the supplement industry can generate around 37 BILLION Dollar per year!
But is it a good thing? Does the crazy high sales means more healthier people?
What do you think?
The answer is, they are not! Because supplements don’t do a ton of things in our body, or even they can harm us.
Keep reading…
Not Approve
The Food and Drug Administration is responsible to keep the public as safe as possible by making sure that the food and drug industries are making safe products. So, if you want to start selling a type of food in the States, you need to get some sort of approval from these people. If not, you can’t sell your products legally.
Now, that is talking about food and drug, how about supplement? Which one are they under? Drug category? Food?
Well, it used to be under the drug category, but now it is not anymore. This is because the supplements contain ingredients straight from natural food that we eat. For instance a Vitamin C supplement may come from an oranger or Omega 3 may come from fish. Hence, the FDA decided to not have any regulation for them, just like what they mentioned here. To them it is just a type of food. You won’t have to approved fish from being sold in the market, so why would you approve pills that contain the nutrients taken out of fish.
Was that a good move ?
Not Effective and Harmful?
It was not a good move that the FDA made, because supplements can be dangerous to health. For instance in this study, it hinted that men who took a higher dose of Vitamin E is shown to have slight increase in risk of coronary artery disease.
Or how about, the herbal supplement like St.John’s Wort that is causing a lot of people to be poisoned.
All in all, there are about 275,000 reports of people being poison in the US due to this supplements over the last 20 years!
Effective?
Beside the harmful effects towards the body, supplements don’t really do a lot to our body. Here is why:
In order to create a supplement pills, the companies need to isolate the most “well-proven” nutrients. For instance, Vitamin C from an orange, because it is backed up by research papers that shows that this vitamin do good to our body. Or Vitamin E which is shown to be able to protect our body from dangerous free radicals.
Once, they are extracted into tablets, these companies will start marketing their pills by advertising how good the Vitamins can do to the body.
But they are missing something… A very big thing actually…
But wait a second, they are advertising the benefit of the Vitamin! not the pill..
You see, most foods that we see doesn’t only have one nutrients, but it contains a lot of them. In a grape, you can find a ton of vitamins
In fact, this is what happen in all our food. There is no food on Earth that has only one single nutrient in them. So how are we suppose to eat a pill containing a single nutrient and expect to benefit from it?
You see all nutrients don’t work alone, but they all work together in your body and produce amazing result. When you take one out, I can almost guarantee that it doesn’t work.
It is not a mathematical equation!
On top of that, we need to change our mindset that a pill will not work wonders for you. We need to realize that there is no shortcut in life. If we want to be healthier, we need to start eating real food and not relying on pills to get our daily nutrients.
Look, I am not saying that all supplement are bogus, some do work and are vital in certain situations. For instance, Chinese herbal remedies AKA Chinese supplements, will work in some situations. Or when kids are lacked of certain nutrients, these supplements will be able to help these kids.
But beside those things above, we shouldn’t rely on these pills for our health. There are a ton of nutrients in our food and also other nutrients as well. The combination of these two things will work wonders for your body.
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For you guys that have questions on fitness, health, or lifestyle,
send an email to: jw.fit211@gmail.com
I will answer them!
Cheers!!
