I don't understand one thing?

[Aneres]

This is a genuine question, why do people doing low carb need vitamins, potassium and all sorts of other supplements if this is the way people ate with no problems before carbs..? I really don't get that. :q:

[EmmaB]

I don't believe that a low carb diet (other than strict induction perhaps) is any more deficient in vitamins/minerals than any other modern food intake would be. It may be that with modern farming & processing methods we simply can't get everything we need from our produce any more (eg ubiquitous grain-fed beef whereas we'd be better off eating grass-fed beef). Or it may be that our lifestyles/budgets etc stop us getting everything we need. Most likely it is a combination of both. But whatever the reason for not getting enough vitamins, the one thing that I know is not the cause is low carb eating. People eating modern, high-carb diets need vitamin supplements just as much as low carbers.

So why did I start taking supplements shortly after I started low carb? Well, do you think you were getting all the right vitamins/minerals before low carb? I certainly don't! I was so unaware of my food intake that I couldn't even have conceived of trying to correct vitamin/mineral inadequacies. Hell, I couldn't even correct my calorie intake to lose weight! Finding low carb helped me sort out my food intake, start paying attention, seeing enough success to keep going and finally starting to care about what I put in my mouth. Then I could see the value of getting the right vitamins/minerals, so I decided to fix that too.

So in answer to your question, this is not actually the way people ate before carbs in terms of vitamin/mineral content in food. We've changed our ways of producing and consuming food so dramatically that supplementation has become useful for almost every modern person.

Em

[Aneres]

Hi Em

Thx for replying. It's food for thought :D I wish I didn't have those symptoms, but I did and whether it's detox or not, I prefer to get my vitamin needs from the food I eat..I hate pill popping.

[EmmaB]

Have you seen the thread where a member devised a weekly intake that covered the RDI of almost everything? I would include a link but I've having trouble finding it with a search. It was very interesting!

[astrocreep]

Aneres, I can't really be bothered taking a multivitamin everyday. I dont do it because I'm getting ALOT more vitamins and etc now then I ever used to since I'm eating more veggies. Have you checked your fitday vitamin counts? I think it's under "records", or something like that.

[Meg_S]

I think it's the food choices that people make, especially when new to low carbing.

How tempting is it to eat loads of delicious bacony sausagy beefy food and to forget what is really good for us? It's exciting to lose weight - even if our food choices are not optimal.

Over several years my "regular when I am being healthy" food has changed to a very high percentage of dark green vegetables and a much lower percentage of meat (I am a meat fam) and I avoid soy and artificial sweetners, ANY wheat etc. I eat cottage cheese and low carb milk, homemade yogurt, salmon.... I have no need for vitamins, although I do supplement with a "green drink" and with omega 3 fatty acids, mainly because of the poor quality of the vegetables generally available in the stores.

[taming]

If you are talking ancient times--just think about how short the average lifespan was back then!

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

[Aneres]

If you are talking ancient times--just think about how short the average lifespan was back then!

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

oh my gosh, I don't know if linking to a low life expectancy article is good advertisement for the lc way of life...LOL.. :D just kidding! I couldn't actually open the link but I'll do some research on that, thanks!

Thx everyone, for the interesting replies. I'm new to this as I said, so still have a lot of questions- enquiring minds want to know!

[Meg_S]

there was more to the short lifespan back then than eating... illness, harsh lifestyle, childbirth etc.

[taming]

of course there was, but poor nutrition made everything a whole lot more difficult. Women were not in optimal health when they gave birth and a great many children died young of nutrition related disease.

The modern day diets--all that processed food yada yada--are killers too, but the idea that in the "good old days" people had remarkably healthy diets is pretty much fictional when you look at the world at large. There you saw a whole lot of famine and malnutrition--heck you still see that in a huge part of the world.

[astrocreep]

In the "old world" people were no where near as healthy as people are today. Just the fact a good pecentage had to eat what they could grow, and lets face it I'm sure their daily assortment of fruits and vegetables weren't on the top of their list. LoL. They sure did get more exercise than we do now, LoL. And they didn't have the choice to eat all the crap we have now. So in that respect they were healthier, but overall? Absolutely not.

[black57]

I agree with Meg S. When we first begin this woe many have a difficult time increasing or adding healthy foods to their diet. Some have complained about not liking vegetables. I take supps but I no longer take them on a daily basis. I will take potassium and a multi to keep up my energy levels or if my legs are cramping alittle. I try to eat more avocadoes however instead of taking potassium supps. Avocado is a much more tastier way of getting my health on.

[Meg_S]

I think that perhaps looking at historic nutrition has more to do with what our bodies are genetically designed to process than it does with the living conditions back in the day, which certainly led to a shorter life span. I am not a scientist, and I have not researched this in depth. However, just look at any of our pets or livestock. If you feed them processed food, rather than what they have historically eaten in the natural world, their health will generally decline. Health... nor necessarily referring to the rate or the size that they grow, nor to hormonally medicinally induced states of high performance. Humans are animals, our bodies need proper nutrition for optimal performance. You can feed a body what it doesn't REALLY like best, and still alter it with supplements, medicines, hormones in order for it to have very high performance. Is that health? For some people it is, for some it isn't.

[grandpa]

A very common misconception about average lifespan is that we assume most people died at that age. What it actually means is that for ALL live births, this was the average age of death. Infant and young child mortality used to be much higher, driving the average down. A better statistic is "expected lifespan at 40 years of age"

For example 10 infants die before 1 year
10 infants live to be 70 years old
Average lifespan for this group is 35 years.

[MyJourney]

Our soil has been depleted of nutrients. Animals are not free to graze and eat what they want, they are kept in small cages and not allowed to roam free and fed stuff like soy. This causes them to be deficient in certain nutritious ways. Fruits and veggies are being gentically modified every day. They are breeding our fruits to be sweeter and sweeter to cater to the American palatte.

Even our all natural stuff isnt as all natural as you might think. Much of it is from genetic mutation and breeding.

On top of that, everyone, not just low carbers are encouraged to take a multivitamin daily. People just dont make the best food choices every day.

I will say that low carbing I am getting FAR more vitamins and minerals than I was before I was LCing. On fitday there have been many days where I have met or exceeded 100% of all or very close to all of reccomended daily values.

I will also say that I don't regularly take multivitamins for personal reasons which I will not get into now, but if you are going to, I would seriously look into the quality of the multivitamin you will take.

[csoar2004]

:D I wish I didn't have those symptoms, but I did and whether it's detox or not, I prefer to get my vitamin needs from the food I eat..I hate pill popping. This would work, IF commercial food production didn't produce for LOOK/shipping ease and produced instead for maximum nutrition. Unfortunately, in their search for ever better-shipping food, they've depleted the soil of nutrients that USED to get into the food. Major Sources of Nutrient Deficiencies
1. Our diet is nutrient deficient because our soil is nutrient deficient: There is an important relationship between soil, plants and human health. Plants are an intermediary by which certain elements of rocks, decomposed vegetation, minerals, oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen are assimilated and built up into proteins, sugars, starches, fats and organic cells. The quality of the foods we eat reflects the quality of the soil in which the foods were grown in. Soil can vary in nutrients from city to city, state to state and country to country.
Reasons for Soil Deficiency
Artificial Chemical Fertilizers More than 25 years ago French scientist Alexis Carrel said, that chemical fertilizers indirectly contribute to the change of nutrient value of foods, by increasing the abundance of crops without replacing all the exhausted mineral elements in the soil.
Also, when chemical fertilizers are used, the earthworms literally leave the soil. Many of these chemicals kill the earthworm and also alter the nature of the microbes, which may become virulent instead of beneficial. The earthworm is one of the most important considerations in terms of a nutrient rich soil.
Continuous Cropping
Continuous cropping make the soil deficient after using the same land over and over. For example: Oats and buckwheat have been analyzed for their mineral content over a 10 year period and the potassium level dropped 2/3 over that 10 year period. Organically grown foods are much richer in essential nutrients than the "look alike" commercially grown products.
2. Food Processing
Over half of the calories in the typical American diet come from processed and refined foods, from which much of the mineral, vitamin, essential fatty acid and fiber content has been removed. :eek: Moral of da story, you WILL need to take dietary supplements if you want to be healthy. Buying all organic produce will help, but we've unfortunately come too far in our own environmental degradation for organic produce to deliver all our vitamin/mineral needs. I hate pill popping So babe, if you want to live a long, healthy, slender life? Get over it and find a high quality vitamin, stat. :lol: ;)

[Aneres]

csoar2004

Thanks for your input. No offence, but pill popping isn't for me and I really think it's a personal choice. It's been proven in this forum that 'different strokes work for different folks'. Not every person here takes vits from what I can see, and they seem to be doing just fine in health and weight loss.

I disagree with you that If I want to be healthy I have to take a dietary supplement. I feel fine and am losing weight [down 16lbs now-woohooo] Slow and steady is winning the race for me. I have a long LONG way to go but then so do a lot of people. And you know what, babe, I feel great! :)

[csoar2004]

csoar2004

Thanks for your input. No offence, but pill popping isn't for me and I really think it's a personal choice. It's been proven in this forum that 'different strokes work for different folks'. Not every person here takes vits from what I can see, and they seem to be doing just fine in health and weight loss. Of course, you can choose to do whatever you want. You live in a free society. ;) I disagree with you that If I want to be healthy I have to take a dietary supplement. I feel fine and am losing weight [down 16lbs now-woohooo] Slow and steady is winning the race for me. I have a long LONG way to go but then so do a lot of people. And you know what, babe, I feel great! :) :thup: I'm glad you feel great. However, I'm of the opinion that you can never have too much information when it comes to your health. Rather than going on gut instinct on this one, I strongly suggest that you do a little research on the nutrients found in foods in today's modern society.
FYI, in the US (admittedly not that big a recommendation, I know!), it is now recommended that all adults take a multivitamin, diet notwithstanding. :)

[Aneres]

FYI, in the US (admittedly not that big a recommendation, I know!), it is now recommended that all adults take a multivitamin, diet notwithstanding.

Yes, but it was recommended that overweight people follow a low fat diet for the last 20 years too, and we all know what we think of that. ;)

Maybe it's not a bad thing to listen to your heart and your body, as well as the 'experts'. I agree with the lc lifestyle but I don't think the book is the be all and end all...over time lots of things have been proved to be not the best for us, after being 'recommended' for the past 20 years or so.

So, I'm happy for you that you take a multivitamin every day and respect your right to do so, please respect my right to not take it. :)