There’s a misconception about supplements that affects millions of health conscious individuals.
Has your thinking been corrupted too?
The problem isn’t with supplements per say, it lies more with an unfair reliance on supplements, and the public’s lack of understanding of the importance of “low tech” whole foods.
Most gym goers believe supplements are a better source of nutrition than real food, and that without them their gains will be limited. However, if supplements are relied on too heavily, they will actually cause unnecessary frustration, wasted money and time, and hinder your progress.
Let me show you a typical example so you get a better understanding. Don’t worry if you’re guilty of doing the same, most of us have, including the guy talking to you right now.
Let’s say Joe, a typical trainer, is looking to put on some muscle. Joe’s training hard, doing all the right exercises and getting the proper rest. However, he’s noticed that his gains are nothing to cause him to dust off his birthday suit and wear it with pride. After much contemplation, Joe figures he’s definitely missing something.
After perusing the muscle mags (which are better described as repackaged tabloids), and seeing the ads with the pros swearing that Product X was the key to their success, he figures he needs some of these advertised supplements and makes a bee line to the nearest shop.
He buys himself a nice big container of protein powder with a fancy label covered with $5 words, some creatine, glutamine, and a host of other concoctions supplement companies seem to come up with on a weekly basis. He does exactly as the instructions say and mixes up a few shakes a day. Before you know it, a few months, a few containers, and a few hundred bucks later and the number on the scale and his strength are about the same as they were before.
What did Joe do wrong? He’s training’s right, he’s resting properly, and he’s supplementing like the instructions say.
Joe, like many of us bitten by the “Ironbug”, has placed too much focus in the wrong area. Cracking open the Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary we find the following definition for the word supplement:
“A product taken orally that contains one or more ingredients (as vitamins or amino acids) that are intended to supplement one's diet and are not considered food.”
Most of us, including Joe, have somehow confused the word ‘supplement’ with ‘substitute,’ and have essentially accepted them as a replacement for real food that has to be chewed.
How has this misinterpretation happened?
Supplements are heavily advertised as required for success. A lack of understanding on how to prepare healthy meals that properly fuel you’re body and workouts. The magnetic lure of supplement’s convenience is almost irresistible when one considers how busy and hectic people’s lives are. The lack of healthy options when on the run makes it almost necessary to rely on them. And let us not forget that some, and maybe a little more than some, of us are guilty of being lazy every now and then, and simply want to believe that supplements are just as good as whole food.
Physical culturists, those who believe strength training means strengthening every part of your body, and not merely the muscles, have always kept it plain and simple and relied heavily on good ol’ natural whole foods for gains in physical performance and packing on quality muscle. They aren’t the only ones who believe in Mother Nature’s superiority over science in the kitchen either. Even scientists have known for a long time that there’s still a lot we haven’t figured out yet, and that the nutritional benefits derived from a supplement aren’t always as good as getting the nutrients from real food. Much of this has to do with the fact that whole foods contain many other nutrients that have a synergistic effect, and while advances in food science have been made in great strides, it’s important to remember that the first vitamins were only discovered within the last 100 years or so. More recently we’ve heard of such findings as the Glycemic Index, glycemic load, phytonutrients etc. If there are still substances we haven’t discovered or identified, how could we replicate them?
An example of science’s limitations, and it’s need and ability to constantly improve is ascorbic acid, aka Vitamin C. It was one of the first vitamins discovered; however, when it was first isolated and produced in a supplement form, a substance called bioflavonoids weren’t included. Why not? Because they weren’t discovered until later. When we did find out about them we learned that in nature, bioflavonoids always accompany vitamin C. In fact, the bioflavonoids are essential for better absorption. They increase bioavailability by 30%. This suggests you should take the natural form of vitamin C, the same can easily be said about other vitamins and nutrients to get the full health benefit from them. We’ve also learned that vitamins are absorbed better by our bodies when taken in certain combinations.
Think of it this way, nature is working at a calculus level of math, while we are only operating at mere arithmetic level: the basics of addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. When we try to “engineer food” we are trying to solve a calculus equation with the skill set of basic arithmetic math. It’s like a child who just learned arithmetic trying to write an MIT exam for a Doctorate in Mathematics. Simply put, replicating nature isn’t going to happen any more than little Timmy’s gonna get that grad pic. If it is possible, like Timmy, we got some learning to do
Where does all of this leave us? Do we throw out the supplements, stop taking our vitamins and minerals and shut down GNC?
The truth is high quality supplements like protein powders, whole food vitamins and minerals, “green drinks” and the like do have merit. They work when you first have a solid nutrition plan in place. One made up of a variety of nutritious whole foods that provides enough calories to meet your daily requirements. Those calories need to be made up of the proper percentage, or ratio, of protein, carbs and fats Without such a plan you won’t get the full benefit from your supplements. The nutrition from the supplements will have to make up for it – and you now know that man made supplements aren’t currently providing the same level of nutrition as real food does.
By understanding that supplements aren’t a replacement, it’s easy to see why they shouldn’t, and can’t be expected to replace real food. If they could, we could simply forget about wasting our time in the fields, throw out all of our kitchen appliances except for the blender and we’d be set. The truth is, there are ingredients in Mother Nature’s recipes that we currently can’t replicate in the laboratory, and we may never be able to. So make sure you’re getting regular check ups at the dentist, we’re going to need our teeth for the foreseeable future. In the meantime consider what our friend Voltaire said, “Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.” Plus, the real thing always tastes better than the ‘simulated’ flavor,
Think I hear the dinner bell, see you next time.
Eating Time!
First Create a balanced meal by dividing your plate into thirds. A third each of protein dense and carb dense foods. and a third of fibrous vegetables. An easy way to add variety to your menu is to focus on what’s in season.
Get at least 3 meals a day with 1-3 snacks.
Second Do the first step, and then add supplements. A meal replacement or protein shake used as a snack in between meals and a multi mineral/vitamin are solid choices to start off with. Make sure to read the ingredients, and stay away from fillers, additives, binders and artificial sweeteners. If you can afford it choose whole food multi vitamin/mineral over the synthetic kind.
© 2008 Raymond Toulany
