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What's a Health Food Vitamin ?

Imagine a health food -- not a drug -- powerful enough to help lower your cholesterol, reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer, and, for an added bonus, improve your mood, all this without side effects.

Medical professionals have long wondered why people in certain countries experience remarkably low levels of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and weight problems while enjoying significantly longer more vibrant lives.

Science has now discovered that the answer lies in certain health food vitamins that are a major part of their daily diets.

There's no government definition, but a health food vitamin is a natural food source highly concentrated with a complex supply of quality nutrients.

Vitamins are essential to human life. They're organic compounds necessary in small amounts to promote growth and maintenance of life. They don't provide energy, nor do they construct or build any part of the body. They transform food into energy for the body.

Minerals are important to the overall functioning of the mind and body. They have two general body functions - building and regulating. Without minerals, vitamins can't function. Minerals help build the skeleton and all soft tissues, regulate heartbeat, blood clotting, internal pressure of body fluids, nerve response and oxygen transport from the lungs to the tissues.

The premise of a health food vitamin is that certain foods are nutritional powerhouses. Blueberries bubble with cancer-fighting, heart-healthy antioxidants, avocados ooze with the same good fats that olive oil has, and spinach has it all.

The claims about these foods by food marketing professionals and in popular books like "SuperFoods Rx" create the impression that health food vitamins are the fountain of youth and will save you from cancer, heart disease, diabetes and every other scourge of good health.

Maybe, or maybe not.

But that doesn't mean health food vitamins should be dismissed.

The fact is, there's every reason to eat them.

It's called good nutrition, a concept dietitians have been trying to sell for years. Now, suddenly, it's trendy.

Food companies find the health food vitamin concept irresistible for advertising. But Dole, the fruit and vegetable giant, was not wrong when it called brussels sprouts a health food vitamin in a holiday publicity pitch to food writers. Fact is, brussel sprouts do contain lots of vitamin C and some other useful phytonutrients, and they're very good for you.

A lot of this is common sense, or at least not exactly news. But here's the thing: Even though people know what's good for them, they don't always know how to work these foods into three meals a day.

For example, the health food vitamin pumpkin, shows up around the holidays, usually as pie, but then disappears for the rest of the year -- depriving you of its fiber, potassium and most of all its carotenoids, the antioxidants prevalent in orange and dark-green foods.

Most major degenerative diseases are largely caused by poor diet and unhealthy foods. Additionally, a hectic lifestyle makes it easy to skip a meal or grab less-than-nutritious food on the run.

But a busy day doesn’t have to stand in the way of great health. A regular food supplement is great insurance for days when you do miss a meal or two.

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