Supplementing The Food You Eat With Essential Food Supplements

I eat a well balanced chop plate of food daily.

A balanced meal, says dieticians and other food or nutrition experts will contained certain percentage of complex carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fruits and vegetables plus water.

All these are need primarily for energy; for growth, development, repair and replacement of tissues, bones, ligament, nerves and other intricate parts of the body.

It is best if all the food items were natural rather than processes foods.

Okay, here is an example of a balanced meal for a 60kg man

·         Complex Carb………………………………………………..500g

·         Fats and oils……………………………………………..…….60g

·         Protein……………………….....................................100g

·         Greens and non-leafy vegetables………………..…300g

·         Fruits……………………………………………….………………60g

With this said, why do you think you still need a food supplement? 

The balanced meal I consumed contained all the vitamin and phytonutrients or mineral matters my body need for proper metabolism. But why the extra need for a food supplement? 

At times a special need of food supplements can arise like during a period of ill-health; and when one is recovering after a surgical operation. This is because at this point, less food is being consumed. Such cases are usually understood. But why does one need a food supplement when not strike with ill-health? 

The Need For Food Suplement

Food supplements are vital to any meal one ate. 

Even if you eat only natural foods that are not processed into refined state, you may miss a food factor in the meal you eat. That is where food supplements become of import. 

You see we are still human beings and not animals. Animals got all their needs from the natural states as things are. We humans need to cook all or most of our foods.

With the exception of fruits and certain non-leafy and green leafy vegetables, carbs, fats and oils, and proteins are to be treated with heat or cooked before eating. In the process of cooking the food items say green leafy vegetable certain percentages of essential food nutrients are lost.

In cooking carbs or any water soluble food items for example, vitamin C, B-Complex, vitamin K, anti-grey hair factor, and filtrate factor are mostly or completely destroy. Up to 60% vitamin C and B-complex can be lost in cooking greens. Digesting the 40% will not be completely absorbed by the body due to incomplete digestion. For example, the food not being fully masticated, right from the mouth and as only a partial form of digestion takes place, it is thus partially absorbed in the intestinal villi or intestinal walls. In treating carbs like potatoes and yams with heat, the starch can be over cooked at times and the food nutrients destroyed completely. It is when the carbs is cooked half done or 2/3 that much is got from it in terms of food nutrients.

Some greens will carry germs, virus and bacterial unknown to you. Cold freezing them renders the virus useless and inactive or ineffective. But here all water soluble nutrients get destroyed during the storage or freezing process. You mostly get bulk or roughage in eating such items.

Besides this, it is quite obvious that one still needs a supplement to replace the lost during the cooking and eating stage. This is where supplements become crucial again. 

Chelated Form Of Nutrients

Some foods nutrients are best absorbed when in chelated form up to 90% but not completely. Food nutrients that can be absorbed 100% by the human body are rare indeed. 

With the exception of alcohol which is a beverage and a drug, and can be absorbed 100% via, the stomach walls, all other food items carbs, fats and oils, proteins are below this level. 

The chelated form of food materials are chemically engineered for easy or maximum absorption. Vitamins, mineral matters, proteins in amino acid form are process into chelate forms. So if you badly need a supplement, you can easily have it over the counter.

Some most important food supplement the body needs are amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins C, B-Complex, iron for the formation of new red blood cells; others include magnesium and potassium salts, not epsom salt which is laxative.

The most important food supplement that the body needs is protein especially for building muscles.

Protein Supplements

Proteins are by far the most important food items that the body needs, not that carbs, fats and oils are not important. This is because every part of the body is made up of protein cells. The hair is made up of protein. So are the skin, nails, tissues, and above all the muscles of the body. Think of every organs of your body as consisting mostly of proteins. 

Protein supplements helps to enhance the protein intake of the body. It can help rebuild dead cells. 

Getting Enough Protein From Meals

If you are like me, I think you can do or do without a protein supplement some times. Yes, I do not go on a regular protein supplement intake because I varied all my protein sources fish, meats, eggs, milk, legumes, seeds and roots. These items can form a plate of chop in the right proportion.

With the exception of meat, eggs, and fish, all the others are cooked half in raw state or stewed for 5 minute, so I get better benefit in my chop plates.

One very salient thing missing in most meals is the skin of foods. You usually discard them right? In this you miss a most valuable food item.

There is this vitamin C₁ factor which is little known. You can get it in the skin of the citrus fruits, but I am sure you always throw them away!

Take the skins of root crops like yams and potatoes, but especially the skin and stems of cocoyams. Their skin contained proteins. Even the leaves of the sweet potatoes have protein.

Yesterday, I had a chop plate of yam porridge. I only discard the brittle or wax part of the peel. The whole of the flesh including the inner skin goes into the pot with fried sardines, tilapia, mullets, greens, beans; green, red and yellow chili; and I round this up with some peanuts and a cup of black tea with added sugar and milk.

In this case, I think I need less of a supplement, for I get all the protein my body needs from more than two sources.

Try a variety of proteins like meat, fish, bird, legumes, nuts, greens and roots in combined forms. Chew them well and you are right in getting them well absorbed. 

To your good health!

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