Awful Places To Get Your Vitamin C
Tasty, but not necessarily healthy
Oranges and other citrus always come to mind when people talk about sources of vitamin C. Lemons, limes, bell peppers, kale, broccoli, strawberries, kiwi, and tomatoes are other good sources.
The winner (that we know of) in the natural world is the Kakadu Plum, a native of Australia, that has upwards of 100 times the vitamin C of oranges. A three and a half ounce serving has around 3,000% of your daily vitamin C.
One primary chemical that provides all that mighty C for us is ascorbic acid. A substance that can be produced in mass quantities and added to a multitude of products. There are some chemical cousins that get the job done as well, such as sodium ascorbate.
A complete lack of vitamin C is bad news for the human body. We can’t make vitamin C ourselves, and it’s not really stored in the body. Scurvy sets in, an affliction of the tissues breaking down until it becomes fatal. It’s quite a long and tragic history of people falling victim to it, especially sailors on long voyages with no sources of vitamin C, before science figured out what the problem was and how to fix it.
So in a pinch, a little vitamin C is better than no vitamin C. This got me to thinking, just for fun, what are the best of the worst sources? Here are a…
