So, how much do you actually know about how your body works? (Page 1 of 3)

Indeed.  !  Juicing is supposed to be one good way to go if one wants to get their nutrients naturally, but isn't up to eating the mass amounts of food required to get the equivelent dosages.  Even better...you're able to know for sure what you're consuming and have a say in making sure it's organic. 

Some various things that stood out for me in the Vitamins chapter:

"Over 90% of ascorbic acid in this country is manufatured at a facility in Nutley, New Jersey, owned by Hoffman-LaRoche, one of hte world's biggest drug manufacturers.  Here ascorbic acid is made from a process involving cornstarch and volatile acids.  Most U.S. vitamin companies then buy the bulk ascorbic acid from this single facility.  After that, marketing takes over.  Each company makes its own labels, its own claims, and its own formulations, each one claiming to have hte superior form of vitamin C, even though it all came from the same place, and it's really not vitamin C at all.....Vitamin manufacturers compete for customers with identical products.  They are bought their synthetic vitamisn form the same couple of drug companies.   To differentiate their product, each makes claims of "high potency"....."

"Vitmains are not individual molecular compounds.   Vitamins are biological complexes.  They are multi-step biochemical interactions whose action is dependent upon a number of variables within the biological trrain.  Vitamin activity only takes place when all conditions are met within that environment, and when all co-factors and components of the entire vitamin complex are present and working together......Mainstream marketing of vitamins and minerals has successfully created the myth that vitmains and minerals may be isolated from each other, that correct amounts may be measurd out, and then we can derive total benefit from taking these fractioned chemical creations.  Nothing could be farther from the turth.  Vitamins and minerals, and also enzymes, work closely together as co-factors for each other's efficacy.  If one part is missing, or in the wrong form or the wrong amount entire chains of metabolic processes will not proceed normally...."

"In one experiment, synthetic vitamin B (thamine) was shown to render 100% of a group of pigs sterile!  100% would be considered a significant finding.  (Dr. Barnett Sure, Journ Natr 1939).   Perhaps the fact that synthetic vitamin B comes from coal tar, maybe that has something to do with it, you think?  Then there's vitamin B12, which comes from activated sewage sludge. (Frost p 60).  Been shooting blanks since you started on those multi's?"

"Whole food vitamin C as found in potatoes, onions, and citrus fruits is able to quickly cure any case of scurvy. By contrast, the factionated chemical ascorbic acid has been shown to be insufficient in resolving a scurvy condition, simply because it does not act as a nutrient. (Lancet, 1842)."

You can get lots of healthful vitamin, minerals and enzymes from fresh sprouts that you grow yourself. Easy, cheap and no harmful chemicals. I recommend www.sproutpeople.com for a very good overview of how to grow them and a supply of organic seeds. Another supplier is www.sprouting.com/index.htm (Mumms). I eat sunflower or clover sprouts every day.

Well cool, glad this thread has been useful. 

Yeah, that's the other thing about his site...the history lessons and factoids.   Another good point to mention.

Oh my!

More than half of what this guy wrote about Vitamin C is plain wrong. He takes one view - or hypothesis let's say - and gives it as exact truth.

For me the most dangerous type of people are the ones with half-knowledge and full-judgement. This is a perfect example. Mix half a truth with your own views and beliefs, find a good way of expression (1) - self-marketing let's say - and voila! Here you have a conspiracy web site.

But isn't this the main problem in alternative views? Lots of people believe they're definitely right, it's either black or white. But no, as we frequently say here in NR, reality has more gray areas!

Feritciva, the devil from a supplement company

(1) E.g: Begin your article with "This will be a short chapter, but after you're finished with it, you will know more about vitamins than 95% of clinical nutritionists, doctors, supplement sales force, or bodybuilders. If that sounds arrogant or overstated, it really isn't my fault. I'm just a messenger; a purveyor of information. Either I'm right or the 95% are right; can't be both. "
And people will say, "wow! this guy's really on something".

Here is an interesting discussion on vitamin C from the vitamin C foundation forum.
http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/forum … .php?t=350

Its flouted that real complex vitamin C is 10x more effective than the same mass of synthetic ascorbic acid but this may be difficult to prove but is food for thought.

Edit: Rose hips are a great and cheap source of vitamin c complex and bioflavanoids.
No need to pay silly prices

  Yeah, I can relate to that.  What's funny is that I've been telling my - diabetic - coworker about my diet change this week, since I was invited to attend the Christmas party dinner thingy, and now probably can't go because I've just begun implementing a diet overhaul.  Bad timing!  haha  But she seemed to understand, (so I thought...) being that she shops at Whole Foods, like we do, and has a restricted diet due to her diabetes.   I explained that yeah, no more caffeine.  No more sugar.  Going to FINALLY kick my sugar addiction once and for all.  Only want to eat clean and organic food, if at all possible.  Veggies and fruits and whole grains.  etc. etc.

Well yesterday rolls around, and they're celebrating the December birthdays with a Ben and Jerry's ice cream cake.  My coworker pipes up with, "Go on Carissa, go have some cake, I'll cover the phones."

I immediately shook my head and simply said, "I can't.  I can't eat that stuff anymore, remember?"

She frowned and said, "ooooo-KAY."  Using vocal inflection and face expression to convey that I was a weirdo for that, and like we hadn't JUST been discussing the diet change and no sugar, no caffeine.   

But I hear you about the workplace bonding over junk food.   Bagel or Donut Fridays.  Monthly birthday celebrations involving cake and ice cream.  Halloween parties with junk colored in bright orange and black.  Etc.  At my job they have cases and cases and cases of soda stacked up in the kitchen....and give it away for free.  So people cracking open soda cans is a common sound around here.  There's a basket of free vending machine type candy, chips, cookies and other junk containing MSG, hydrogenated oils, artificial colors and flavors, etc.  It makes it hard to not grab something when hungry, but sorry, can't do it anymore.    (They do have the one lone basket of fruit from the grocery store, bananas and apples, but the one time I took one of the apples and bit into it the apple flesh was stiff and chewy.....it wouldn't dissolve in my mouth.  I've never encountered an apple like that before in my life, had to spit it out.  So much for that!  haha  And no, it wasn't fake!)

It's not that it's appetizing, it's the nutritional content.  You only have to eat something once, and if it's high in a particular nutrient or has high nutirional content in general then your body records that and remembers, causing a craving down the line when your reserves are running low on a particular nutrient.  The yolk that would nourish the chick is just as good for us.   B vitamins and biotin, protein and so on...big time important nutrients for us.  So while I can't speak for others, I can say that in my own case, I've eaten eggs when I've had cravings for them...craving the nutrients that is in them, apparently.   

Don't know either.  I hated milk as a kid, but I was forced to drink it.   Pasteurized milk has no enzymes, so it's completely undigestable, and it lacks the calcium content that we've been programmed to believe it has.  Not even including the other problems and issues with milk, as noted in the excerpts you posted.   Our parents were duped, programming - "Milk...it does a body good."  Milk=calcium, and the other lies.   And they didn't have the means to get the real truth about it all, and that in turn sets up a pattern of consuming milk products in general.   Cheese on our hamburgers and sandwiches and in our pizza.  Milk on our cereal.  Ice cream for desert, and cake with whipped cream.  Cottage cheese and yogert for the health nuts.   Cream cheese on our bagels.  Butter on our bread and other foods, and used in cooking.  Cream sauces.  Burritos with sour cream, and sour cream based dips.  Milk products, everywhere we go!

Ummm...meat!

I'm not a "vegan," so I'm not going to knock meat.  Humans were designed to eat meat, and do need it.  I've gone back and forth about this myself, but I'm not able to go without it for long stretches.  The longest for me was almost a month, supplementing with other foods, but it wasn't enough.   Heme (meat) iron is a very particular form of iron that spinach and other things can't compare to.   And I've talked on this forum about the vegetarians I've met who seemed in dire need of a meat intervention.  "Somebody strap that woman down to a table and feed her a hamburger!  She needs it!"    There's more I could say about the problems and issues I've observed with vegetarians, but I'm pretty blunt and it's going to offend somebody somewhere, so, I'll bite my tongue.    So all I can say is that clean meat in moderation from organic farms that don't abuse their animals is a good thing, in my opinion.