Are Pricey "Food State" Supplements Healthier For You?
"food state" supplements are made from enhancing or fermenting foods. They cost more... but are they better for your family?
You can now buy what are called "food state" supplements - as the name suggests, they are made from food. To make "Food grown" supplements, extra nutrients are added to food pulps, such as carrots, citrus fruits or baker's yeast. These extra nutrients enter the cells of the foods and encourage them to produce higher levels of nutrients. Another way to make food state supplements is with fermentation. You put a fruit mixture, into a tank and add a yeast. This ferments the fruit to make extra nutrients. These processes can't make large quantities of any single nutrient and costs more time and money - which is why food state nutrients tend to come from smaller, niche brands and have higher price tags.
So why bother doing all this when synthetic vitamins have been safely used for years? We need to go back to the work of a scientist called Albert Szent-Gyorgi. In the '20s he was treating sailors who had scurvy - a deficiency in Vitamin C. He saw they recovered faster when they were given oranges to eat, instead of Vitamin C supplements. So what's going on?
Nutritional therapist Ian Marber explains, "Nutrients in food are not eaten in isolation. They come surrounded by other compounds that are believed to play a role in how the vitamin or mineral is absorbed. The theory with food state supplements is that they include more of these extra nutrients, so your body can absorb them more effectively."
In some ways, the theory is similar to the way Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM aims to maintain balanced nutrition through diet. In recent years, both food therapy and medical diet therapy have been increasingly applied in clinical nutrition therapy. We know, for example, that calcium can only cross through the intestinal wall if it's accompanied by a specific protein. This might explain why a 1987 study found that men who took nutritional yeast, as well as calcium, had a greater drop in blood pressure than men who just took a calcium supplement. But what else is going on?
Some makers of whole food supplements claim that your body can absorb food state nutrients better. And it is true that there's something about eating whole food that helps nutrients absorb better. For example, you absorb seven times more cancer-fighting compounds from eating real broccoli than by taking a synthetic supplement.
But this does not prove that the nutrients in food state supplements are absorbed the same way. And it's also not true that synthetic supplements are bad, or do not work. In fact, some food state supplements are also augmented with synthetic supplements.
Says Suzie, "The amount of a specific nutrient in a food or fruit can vary from day to day, depending on how it was grown and the weather and soil. But supplements must contain the amount they say on the label. So some companies add extra to make sure everything is accurate."
Food state supplement makers pride themselves on limiting or eliminating binders, fillers, colours, and other added ingredients. So does this make a difference? Says Suzie, "When you put nutrients into a tablet form you have to combine all the differently shaped molecules and compounds. Companies use binders such as calcium carbonate to do this. They are strongly regulated to be safe, and they use very tiny amounts."
But a few of the ingredients are raising eyebrows. The European Food Safety Authority recently examined new evidence against one ingredient called titanium dioxide. It decided that the ingredient is still safe, but should be investigated further. Other studies claim that an ingredient called magnesium stearate can increase the risk of cancer. It is added to some pills to stop the powder that makes the pills from clogging up the pill-making machines.
However, pharmacist Mike Wakeman, who is a spokesperson for the Health Supplements Information Service, says, "When magnesium stearate enters the stomach, hydrochloride acid causes it to uncouple into magnesium and stearic acid, which is a fat found in meat. So it is very unlikely that it causes any harm to health, particularly in the tiny amount that you find in a supplement.
Some binding agents are also used as stabilizers so the supplement can last on the shelf. Says, "Many nutrients degrade quickly, so some ingredients are added as stabilizers so the products can still meet label claims, even at the end of the shelf life.
To get the best from the supplements you buy, it is important to store them correctly. A study from Purdue University in the USA found that poor storage can cause supplements to degrade well before the end of their shelf life - and it doesn't matter if they are food safe or synthetic. So it is important to store your supplements in a cool, dark, dry place, even better, use them up by taking a supplement every day.
As Ian says, "The only vitamin that works is the one you consume regularly. Supplements only work when they are taken consistently, and that is a lifelong project."
Bauer Syndication / Are Media. Additional Reporting by Tara Barker.