Whole food supplements

Whole food supplements comprise a unique class within the food supplement industry. But the distinction must be made to avoid confusion over the differences between foods, food supplements, whole food supplements, vitamins, multivitamins and herbs. Few consumers recognize the difference and are more swayed by promotion and advertising than by demonstrable evidence.

Definitions
By definition, whole food supplements are foods that have been compressed into tablet form, poured into capsules or powdered. The word “whole” indicates that the end product — a supplement — does not contain parts of foods, or synthetic or isolated vitamins. Ideally, the foods comprising these supplements have not been subjected to irradiation, contain no pesticide or herbacide residues, contain no GMO (genetically modified organisms), have not been sterilized, and do not contain animal products that have been subjected to steroids, antibiotics or other drugs. The notion being, the closer to nature, the more benefit to the consumer.

Further, whole food supplements should not contain isolated minerals, amino acids, carotenes or any other substance that is not native to, and still intact within the original food. Thus, a supplement that contains foods plus a mixture of isolated (also called “fractionated”) vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other substances, does not constitute a whole food supplement. Examples of whole food supplement ingredients may include carrots, broccoli, kale, alfalfa, wheat grass, acerola cherry, cauliflower, kelp, wild pansy, spirulina, bovine liver, bovine kidney, radishes and quinoa.

However, the truth is that all of the most well-known whole-food vitamin supplement products available on the market are mixtures of isolated vitamins combined with whole foods, which are then described in manufacturer marketing as "foods." They are not actually whole food supplements in the strict sense of the definition. But they are still effective to improve health if the nutrients are provided in the potencies that have been shown to produce optimal effects, however most of them deliver doses too small to be of significant benefit.

Research
The definitive 9600 work article on this subject, fully referenced from peer-reviewed medical journals is found at:
http://www.michaelmooney.net/whole-food-supplements.pdf.

Food researcher Vic Shayne, PhD, writes,

Since the above types of food ingredients are natural, they contain a host of nutrients that exist within a “complex.” A food complex includes not only vitamins and minerals, but also many cofactors (helper nutrients) that are found in nature’s foods as a result of the evolutionary process. Cofactors and food complexes therefore cannot be made in a laboratory nor can they be duplicated by scientists. Many nutritional doctors and researchers conclude that cofactors are often more valuable than vitamins and minerals, and that food cannot be duplicated due to its complexity, dynamism and energy. Cofactors within nature’s foods (which are found also in whole food supplements) include, but are not limited to: vitamins, minerals, terpenes, trace mineral activators, enzymes, co-enzymes, chlorophyll, lipids, essential fatty acids, fiber, carotenoids, antioxidants, flavonoids, pigments, amino acids, whole proteins and more.

The ingredients within foods operate on a system of synergism; in other words they work as ‘teams’ to feed cells. The interwoven, interrelated and complementary functions of food particles represent some of Nature’s most wonderful properties of synergistic power and function. Synergism is defined as ‘the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects: working together.’

Where marketing interferes with health
Although the term “whole food supplement” should denote that the product’s ingredients are only made of whole, natural foods, this is not always the case. Instead, many products on the market contain not only foods, but are also infused with isolated vitamins, minerals and amino acids. Therefore, mixed in with the foods such as broccoli, et.al, (as indicated on the label) would also be mentioned —for example — zinc chelate, ascorbic acid, vitamin A palmitate, d-tocopherol, mixed tocopherols, vitamin C ascorbic acid, ester C, pyridoxine, thiamin, riboflavin, rutin, pantothenic acid, potassium, glutamic acid, beta carotene, iron, folic acid, etc. Wherein real, whole foods contain these nutrients naturally, some supplement manufacturers add the isolates to the foods, yet paradoxically claim their products are “whole foods.” This amounts to a contradiction of philosophy. Essentially, these manufacturers mislead the public and are involved in the practice of “standardization,” which is a term used to mean that a certain amount of a vitamin or food chemical is infused into the formula to ensure pharmacological potency. This is a very common practice among food supplements and herbs.

Similarly, in defense of the wholistic approach to food nutrients, James Duke, PhD, herbalist, researcher, author and inventor of the USDA database on food nutrients, wrote,

For years I worked with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) collaborative cancer screening and collaborated with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIDS and Designer Food programs. I watched their scientists and contractors futilely follow their directed fractionations in search of the single super silver bullet compound in the herbal potpourri. It became clear that there were almost always, not one, but many closely related chemicals in a species, each of which contributed in slightly different ways to the activity of the whole herb. More often than not, these chemicals and their activities were synergistic, the whole herb being more active proportionately, than even the strongest single isolated ingredient…t adds up to the whole plant being better than the sum of its known parts…Silver bullets, single solitary chemicals, are still even more likely to upset our genetic phytochemical ratios, and that’s why they are more liable to have serious side effects than natural remedies our genes have experienced over the millennia.

In 1945, Robert McCarrison wrote,

Vitamins will be found to exist — and this is the important point — in the foods made in nature’s laboratory, in quantities and combinations adequate for the due digestion and assimilation of the natural foodstuffs with which they are associated in nature. The subdivision of vitamins into many classes is not without the risks attendant on decentralization. Vitamins, like other essential constituents of food, are not to be regarded as independent of the assistance derivable from their associates in the maintenance of nutritional harmony. Each vitamin is but a member of a team, and the team itself but a part of the co-ordinated whole.

Vitamins and Multivitamins

Wherein a vitamin pill or a multi-vitamin may contain a host of vitamins, minerals and amino acids, they often contain the aforementioned cofactors/complex. They may contain groups of isolated (singular) nutrients that are either extracted from foods (fractionated) or are synthetic (wholly laboratory-made). By their very chemical makeup, vitamins and multivitamins, as well as minerals, are utilized by human metabolism as chemicals that be utilized optimally if the body is concomitantly supplied with the cofactor nutrients that enable them to work. Calcium, which had been shown to build bone by itself with no adverse effects at doses below the Lowest Observed Adverse Effect Level of 5,000 mg per day, for instance, builds bone better when accompanied by magnesium, copper and zinc.

Over 200,000 studies in the National Library of Medicine's database show that these isolated vitamins do produce significant benefits and improve health in normally healthy people with no adverse effects. These benefits include improved bone density (calcium carbonate), reduced premenstrual syndrome (Vitamin B6), reduced duration of cold symptoms (Vitamin C) and other health benefits.

Herbs
Herbs are used more medicinally than are foods, in most cases. Because they are more potent than most foods, herbs are not used on a long term basis to supply the body with the building blocks of health. Rather, they are used by practitioners (herbalists and naturopaths) to rebalance the biochemistry with natural plants. Yet, many herb manufacturers not only include the whole herb in their end products, but also infuse them with isolated active ingredients to increase their potency. One example of many would be the herb milk thistle, known to improve liver health. While some herb formulators use the whole milk thistle plant, others will add to the plant substance the active ingredient (the isolated chemical) silymarin to increase its potency.

Food supplements.
The term “food supplement” means a nutrient product that is meant to be a supplement to food, usually to correct nutritional deficiencies caused by not eating enough whole foods or consuming a diet lacking in enough nutrients or a diet that contains foods that are not healthy. Food supplements usually are simply vitamin and multi-vitamin products or isolated chemicals, and may be either natural or created in laboratories to replicate the natural molecule and duplicate its effects in the body. Of the thousands of food supplements on the market, a great majority of them are isolated USP-type nutrients. Only a few supplements are actually made purely of food and their potencies are very, very low because of it. A whole food supplement that contains a tablet amount of food also costs the consumer over $100 per pound of food tablets. It seems to be more prudent to just make sure one eats lots of fruits and vegetables than to spend this amount of money for tableted food. Food supplements as concentrated isolated nutrients make more sense for this reason, as concentrated isolated nutrients are supported by over 200,000 independently published studies as being safe, supporting optimal health and reducing the potential for numerous diseases.

Uses of Whole Food Supplements
Whole food supplements are said to be one step away from fresh foods. Since they are somewhat processed to be converted into supplement form, they are not as potent as or as nutrient-rich as fresh produce that can be found in a garden, fresh off the farm or in the grocery produce section.

Food science researchers have, in keeping with traditional medicine, discovered that certain foods exert a positive effect on certain bodily systems. Thus, specific whole food supplement formulas are used to feed very specific functions, targeting, for example, the nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, eliminatory, immune, skin, musculoskeletal, energy and glandular systems of the body. Further, there are some foods that offer protection and immune system enhancement with their ability to remove toxins from the body. The sulfur-containing plants — cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, radish and Brussels’ sprouts — are one example. These vegetables have the ability to convert fat-soluble toxins into water soluble versions that can be eradicated from fat cells and removed from the body through the kidneys. Still other natural, whole foods offer antioxidant benefits to offset the damage caused by “free radical” molecules that rob the body of oxygen.

Fruits and vegetables supply antioxidants other than those you can get from pills, say researchers at the USDA’s Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. Ron Prior and co-workers fed 36 men and women aged 20 to 40 or 60 to 80 a diet containing ten servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Then they measured the ‘antioxidant capacity’ of the participants’ blood samples by seeing how well the blood deactivated damaging oxidized free radicals in a test tube. After two weeks, the antioxidant capacity of the participants’ blood rose in both groups, though more consistently in the older people. "Based on this and other studies, it appears that compounds other than vitamins C and E and carotenoids contribute a major portion of the increase in antioxidant capacity," says Prior. Among the foods with the highest antioxidant capacity were oranges, cauliflower, and peas.

A fact of modern life is that most people do not regularly eat real, whole, raw, nutrient-dense foods. Instead, most diets consist of cooked and processed foods that are full of artificial ingredients and toxic substances and contain very little in the way of vitamins or other vital biochemicals. Wherein an ideal diet would contain raw spinach, kale, broccoli, poultry, fish, zucchini, squash, seeds, nuts and fruits, etc., the actual diet of most Western peoples contain few of these real whole foods. Instead, the diet consists of hamburgers, fast foods, french fries, boxed cereal, table sugar, potato chips, bagels, cheese spreads, ice cream, muffins, cakes, fish sticks, trans fats, margarine and pasteurized milk and juice. This Western diet has been called SAD (Standard American Diet).

The SAD diet is so named because its ingredients not only fail to provide people with the nutrients necessary for cellular health and function, but it also is active in destroying health, and thereby creates disease as well as a lack of resistance to disease (also called an impaired immune system). Due to the SAD diet, whole food supplements may be used to bolster health by supplying the nutrients that are not consumed on a regular basis. In this way, consumers of whole food supplements may eat a wide variety of foods in tablet, powder or capsule form without having to even “enjoy” the flavor. The convenience and benefits of whole food supplementation make up, at least in part, for the failings of the daily diet.

Because foods are not pharmacological agents, whole food supplements may be taken in conjunction, and coordination with, other medical treatments, drugs and modalities.

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