Why you can never out-supplement a bad diet

It seems like a new synthetic supplement blend comes out every day, promising to deliver what food cannot, but are these blends doing more harm than good?

Taking a bunch of white, synthetically made powders, mixing them into a bag, and saying that this combination is all you need to heal, even while downplaying the importance of your diet, seems far-fetched, but that is what a lot of companies are telling you. But how are these supplements made, and how does real food stack up? Read on to find out. 

How they are made 

Most vitamins and minerals, while occurring naturally in foods, do not occur as powders in nature. To create a powdered vitamin or mineral, you can either start with a natural source or not at all. The natural side of semi-synthetic supplements, such as magnesium glycinate, takes natural magnesium flakes and combines them with synthetically made glycine, but most people don't know how that glycine is made.

Most synthetic supplements, including glycine, start as petrochemicals and, through many different processes, become something very similar to the glycine found in food, but not exactly the same. 

Now, of course, some supplements are far more processed than others, and any fillers or bulking agents are often waste material that is best avoided entirely. Some supplements can help us in times of need, but replacing the importance of our diet with synthetically made vitamins and minerals is a recipe for disaster. 

Blind usage and blends 

Supplement use should always be targeted, meaning you should know why you are taking them and how they will support your current health. Unfortunately, many people end up with a cupboard full of supplements they bought but don’t know why they take them. Synthetic blends only mask the storage issue; they combine cheap-to-manufacture powders and claim they'll replace that cupboard full of supplements you don’t even know why you take, when in fact the new blend is the same, just repackaged.

Supplements should be just that, things that supplement your diet, not replace it or be used blindly. This is where whole-food supplements shine: you aren’t constantly overdosing on one vitamin or taking processed powders, instead, you use superfoods to your advantage. 

Synthetic blends aim to do the thinking for you and tell you this is all you need - forever, forgetting that nothing can replace real, organic whole food. Only once your diet is in good shape can you think about adding wholefood supplements on top.

Understand why you are taking what you're taking and how it complements your diet, not just another thing you add to a burdensome load of supplements.

Whole food nutrients vs synthetic 

With synthetic supplements, you'll often see very high RDI (recommended daily intake) percentages; this isn’t what you actually absorb, since synthetics are poorly absorbed and most of it is wasted. Sometimes this can be as high as 90% of the number on the label, completely unabsorbed and wasted. 

Whole foods, on the other hand, come packaged with their cofactors which aid digestion. For example, liver contains copper, which is balanced by zinc; if you took copper as a supplement, you'd need to calculate absorption and estimate how much zinc you would need. Rather than guessing, stick to whole foods that are naturally balanced and that your body easily recognises and utilises. 

You can still overdo vitamins from whole foods, but it's much harder than with synthetics, which helps keep your body at a healthier level and reduces the risk of vitamin toxicity or imbalances. No synthetic vitamin comes close to whole-food vitamins.

Revolutionary blends

Most brands selling a synthetic blend will tell you that this new blend is the one that will finally heal your “insert health issue here”, but are these blends truly well thought out, or just guessed at?

Many gut health powders, probiotic blends, and vitality-boosting blends seem to contradict each other. When you realise how cheaply a product can be made with multiple synthetic powders, it begs the question: is this just another gimmick?

Blends also cause vitamins and minerals to compete for absorption. Yes, under lab conditions everything may be perfectly absorbed, but you are not a lab, and as you have just read, most synthetic powders are poorly absorbed, even before you add 10, 20, 30, or even more into the same serving. 

Why you need real food 

As mentioned at the start, you can never out-supplement a bad diet. Synthetic supplements give people the illusion that, if they take this pill or that, they won’t need to worry about the food they eat, but that couldn't be further from the truth. 

We need food, and good-quality, unprocessed food. We should aim to get at least 80% of our nutrients from our diet alone, and then, if needed, turn to wholefood supplements to top us up, never as the basis. 

Whole foods contain far more than people realise, and I imagine science has not yet fully understood all there is to know about food, or that it goes deeper than macro- and micronutrients. After all, organic and grass-fed animal products show that when you let nature do its thing, the food becomes even more nutritious. 

Summary 

Synthetic supplements offer an easy way to avoid taking accountability for your diet. It's easy to swallow a pill or use a tasteless powder, but much harder to cook and prepare whole foods from scratch. But true health isn’t found in supplements derived from petrochemicals. 

True health comes from real food and paying close attention to its source; nature already offers the ultimate blend in foods such as organs, eggs, raw milk, fruit, and vegetables. As always, nature holds the answer, not a bag of chemically made powder.