If you are concerned that you're not getting all of the nutrients in your diet your body needs, you may have considered taking vitamins. However, you may be surprised by how inadequate most of the vitamins sold in stores are for these needs. Without whole food vitamins, you are not likely to get the nutrients your body needs.

The Difference

When you are choosing nutrient supplements, you should consider some of the important differences between traditional and whole food vitamins. First, you need to understand the underlying flaw in most of these supplement products: they aren't able to be used effectively by the body.

Think about how nutrients occur in food. You don't eat an orange and only get Vitamin C. You don't drink milk and only get Vitamin D. These foods include multiple nutrients that occur naturally in the food. They interact with each other in the foods and are processed together in the body. Our bodies are simply not intended to process individual nutrients. Synthetic vitamins (most of the ones you'll find on store shelves) are just combinations of isolated vitamins so your body cannot use them effectively.

With whole food vitamins, the nutrients do not come from a synthetic source. Instead, they come from raw foods so the vitamins stay together and are not isolated. You still reap the benefits of vitamins occurring in their natural sources.

Nutritional Density

Another benefit from using whole food vitamins is the nutritional density. Density refers to how packed with nutrition the vitamins are compared to eating the foods themselves. Imagine trying to eat 10 raw carrots at one time just to get a boatload of Vitamin A. Now imagine taking a capsule that contains 10 raw crushed and dried carrots. You can see how much easier it would be to get the nutrients you need from the concentrated form then from the foods themselves. That doesn't mean you shouldn't keep eating those healthy foods as part of your diet, but you shouldn't kid yourself about your ability to use those food sources to get the nutrients you need.

Whole food vitamins provide a rich source of nutrients from natural sources. You don't have to worry about the effects of synthetic nutrients or worry that these isolated nutrients simply aren't going to provide your body with what it needs. If you are in the market for an effective source of nutrients, you should consider whole food vitamins.