Collin County Living Well Magazine September/October 2016 | Page 24

By Christina Reiter, BSN, CCN

How Can Quality Be Determined
in a Nutritional Supplement?

T

o answer this question, it’s important to know that nutritional
supplements are processed in
the body as nourishment or
food, just like a bag of potato
chips or a can of beans that you might
buy in a supermarket. In the case of
supplements, nutrients (or, in the case
of herbs, phytochemicals) have been
packaged for purchase several days,
weeks, or months after manufacture.
What concerns would you have when
purchasing a bag of potato chips or a
can of beans? Most likely, they would
be something along the lines of these
five things:
• How fresh is it?
• Can my body use this?
• Does the label accurately describe the
contents?
• If there’s a problem, can I talk to a
manufacturer’s representative?
• Is it free from contaminants, microbes
and allergens?

Another Question: Can’t I simply eat the
right foods to get what I need for healing?
It would be nearly impossible to con-

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sume and assimilate within a single
day an adequate amount of the proper
foods to take care of both the body’s
daily nutritional needs and have
enough remaining to pay back nutritional debts, thus allowing for healing.
The reasons are as follows:
• The body’s priority with any nutrient
consumed each day is to use it,
first, to take care of its daily needs.
Second, the body then begins paying back debts and healing using
any nutrition that may be left over at
the end of the day.
• Most people, especially as they
begin to change to better eating
habits, will suffer from an assimilation problem. This is partly due to
past dietary deficiencies. Therefore,
even if they do eat well, there will
not be 100% use of the food. This
is a process tha