Why we need vitamins and minerals

Our bodies are such that we need vitamins and minerals. They are both required in smaller quantities than the calories and proteins that we take. There are excess of 40 nutrients that we need to remain healthy. It is not possible to get all these from the food we eat. The vitamins and minerals tend to be little in the food and sometimes completely absent. We also have cases whereby we just need them to supplement the one in the diet.

We have 3 scenarios which present themselves:

Vitamins and minerals in diet

When we eat a healthy diet, we benefit from the vitamins like vitamin A, B, C and so on. These are vitamins which will be present in the food. Vegetables will give us vitamin C for instance. We also get minerals like calcium, zinc, and iron among others.

Body manufactured

There are those that we don’t need to get from external sources since our bodies are able to manufacture them on its own. In most cases, we rarely have deficiency of these ones.

Supplements

The third one which forms the basis of this article is the use of the supplements. Look at it this way: if you can’t find the vitamins and minerals in the food and your body is not able to produce them, then you need the supplements. There are herbal supplements, the fatty acids, amino acids, multivitamins and so on; all these are manufactured and sold to us just like any other products. Some are healthy whilst others are not. You will find that in most cases, it is important to distinguish them from the synthetic ones.

Are the vitamins and minerals really necessary?

There are some people who have continually queried the very essence of having these supplements. They are necessary in some cases and in some others, you really don’t need them. Let us look at scenarios when you absolutely must have them.

Insufficient amounts in the diet

Not all of us are able to eat healthy food every day. It could be because of deprivation or that one is a vegetarian. In such cases, you may not avoid the use of the vitamins and minerals supplements. The kind of diet that we take will have an impact on our health in terms of what we are getting. If you are a vegetarian for instance, you will lack some vitamins here, some minerals there and so on. Unless you have other viable alternatives, then you will be compelled to take these supplements almost on a daily basis.

Strict diet

The other reason why we find ourselves compelled to take them is the fact that we sometimes are in strict diet regimes. This means that we shut ourselves from some healthy food that would have improved our health.

Either way, you will find that we cannot do away completely with these supplements. However, you will need to know when to say no to them. There are some cases when we tend to abuse them. This should be discouraged.