Total Health Magazine

NOW Foods provides a wide variety of quality natural products that are specifically formulated to help support and promote optimal health through good nutrition.

NOW is still family owned as it has been from the beginning. El Richard started the company in 1968 and the entire family has contributed to the success of NOW.

Taking Supplementation Seriously Part II:

Last month, we started a dialogue on whether supplementation is the appropriate course for insuring a nutritionally complete diet. We examined a very simple case, the multivitamin: a supplement designed to provide the base set of essential nutrients that are requisite for normal human metabolism. In response to the case against multivitamin usage (“proper diet alone should be adequate in providing essential nutrients”), we considered how 1) widespread deficiency of several nutrients in the U.S. diet, 2) the demonstrated reduction in nutrient availability in the modern food supply, and 3) the subclinical deficiencies in several nutrients that can result from caloric restriction and exercise, suggest that supplementation of essential nutrients may be warranted in some individuals. Here we expand the list of observations to consider when making the decision whether to include a multivitamin in your daily health regimen.

Taking Supplementation Seriously Part III

There is little debate that a balanced diet is the most desirable method for obtaining essential nutrients, but there are cases when the use of supplemental nutrients may be requisite for insuring adequate nutrient intake. When negotiating the vast number of choices in dietary supplements, one criteria for deciding upon a product is whether it contains natural versus synthetic vitamins and minerals.

Taking Supplementation Seriously Part V

Choosing a quality dietary supplement can be an exercise in abstraction. As a class of product nestled somewhere in between food and drug, they lack many of the obvious quality measurements inherent to these two other categories (such as the sensory properties one uses to select quality produce, or the strict quality control procedures inherent to the manufacture of a government-regulated pharmaceutical). Until recently, the only way to assess the quality of a supplement (short of spending a personal fortune on lab testing), was from the synthesis of subjective data (brand reputation, marketing claims, and personal experience).