Vitamins and Minerals in Supplements
I got an interesting question last week about a supplement that contained a blend of fruit and vegetable concentrates: vitamins and minerals aren’t included on the label, so are they in there? The answer is probably. It all comes down to the purpose of the supplement.
A concentrate is typically the entire vegetable or fruit with the water removed by a dehydration process; whatever is in the plant will be in the concentrate. You could liken this to drying a fresh herb to use as a spice. A more sophisticated process is to remove some of the fiber as well; that would remove solids, but some vitamins and minerals could remain.
Another variation is if a company were to focus on a phytonutrient blend, such as the polyphenols and hesperidin from citrus fruit. They would standardize the supplement to the amounts of those phytonutrients but wouldn’t be concerned about vitamins or minerals unless they met a percentage of the RDA.
There is still more precision in concentrate and phytonutrient supplements, and we’ll talk about them on Saturday.
What are you prepared to do today?
