Because of the way our modern diet has ‘evolved’ and how we’ve gone from eating food from the earth, fruits, vegetables, sprouts, nuts & seeds and now eat bagged, packaged, boxed and canned so called ‘foods’ supplements come in quite handy to ease the toxic burden on our bodies and to give our body more nutrition. A Healthy plant based diet is a must, eating plenty of vegetables and fruits on a daily basis is very important but even that may not necessarily get you all of the nutrition that your body needs to stay healthy and in it’s peak state of health.
Because of the soil becoming less effective in producing nutrient dense food over time and because of all the chemicals, pesticides and sprays used on even our healthy foods we have seen a massive increase in disease, obesity and sickness overall. Supplements are great to include in your healthy lifestyle even if you do eat a healthy diet, as long as it’s the right supplement that is. Unfortunately because the supplement industry has grown massively many companies have flooded the market to sell supplements that are laced with preservatives, additives, GMO fillers and other junk. The quality of food is important to your overall health, a person eating organic vegetables and fruits is getting a much better more nutrient dense diet full of nutrition than another person eating genetically modified corn chips and twinkies.
Quality Is Everything.
Understanding and being able to recognize the quality of your supplement is a unique skill to have because you will be able to decipher a low quality supplement from a high quality supplement. This will give you the ability to use your money more wisely and spend money on high quality supplements that give you the most for your investment, as opposed to wasting money on supplements that are synthetic, filled with added ingredients, and just generally ineffective.
Spending years learning about health and wellness I have discovered that there is a pretty broad range as far as quality goes. There are supplements at drug stores, vitamin shops and health food stores. Generally speaking the lowest quality supplements you will find will be found at drug stores and large retail chains like wal-mart, target and other grocery/retail stores. The next level of ‘mid-tier’ supplements you can find at places like the vitamin shoppe and GNC. These places have some low and mid-tier supplements overall yet I personally still wouldn’t buy supplements at these places.
You then have health food stores, a true health food store is typically a smaller local store that has specialized products. I’m not talking about trader joe’s or whole foods, these are both great but still carry a lot of mid-tier products. The smaller health food stores typically carry the highest quality supplements on the market. You can also find the highest quality supplements by searching the web, the great thing about the internet is that you can research further, read reviews, look at the product label and really fully understand a product and what to expect when first taking the supplement.
My recommendation is to shop for supplements at local health food stores or shop for supplements online. You will get the best advice and expertise when asking about supplements from an employee at a small health food store as well, as opposed to a large retail store, drug store or a big box ‘health food’ store.
In my new book “Your Supplements Suck” I talk about the quality range of supplements and how to know whether or not a supplement is actually worth buying and trying out. There are a few guidelines and rules to follow and to keep in mind when shopping for supplements to improve your health that i’ll share with you here so you can better understand what the book is about.
The first thing you want to keep in mine is that like most packaged foods, most supplements contain preservatives to extend the shelf life of the supplement. The companies that make these supplements want them to last as long as possible so that they can shit on the shelf for months (if need be) and still sell and put money in their pocket. The problem with this is that these preservatives effect the integrity and quality of the product which make’s it less likely to be absorbed properly in your body.
Most supplements contain preservatives, unfortunately. Not all supplements contain preservatives though! So understanding what types of preservatives are used in supplements and recognizing them on the label is a good first-step to understanding this. Most supplements also include ‘Filler Ingredients’ added to them.
Why?
Because if I am selling vitamin C and I can put 50% of the capsule with a cheap filler I can reduce the cost of the supplement by potentially 45 or 50%! The lower the cost the higher their profit margins are so a lot of supplement companies will skip corners when it come’s to quality and lead you to believe that you are buying something but you are really buying only a small percentage of the actual ‘healthy component’ within the supplement.
Preservatives and added fillers are two things in supplements to be aware of, if you know the common preservatives and fillers then you can avoid them and make better choices when it come’s to the quality of the supplements that you are purchasing.
These are just a few of the sneaky tactics that supplement companies use when processing supplements, to learn the rest of them and fully understand the quality of a supplement read the book “Your Supplements Suck” and use it to your advantage next time you shop for supplements.
Good luck in your health journey and looking forward to helping you reach your goals!
David Benjamin
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