Tables of opposites and Balance are very similar to the R. A. D. NUTRIENT PROPORTIONS When natural, whole, unrefined, foods are used, nutrients will be in their natural proportion to each other, and from that standpoint the diet will be balanced. However, if vitamins and supplements are consumed in addition to these foods, an imbalance of nutrients will occur; the excess of concentrated nutrients will cause a relative deficiency of all the nutrients not taken— neglected vitamins, the water, fiber, protein, and carbohydrates left behind.
PROPORTION-OF-NUTRIENTS MODEL
If a balanced diet looks like this:
a fortified natural-foods diet would look like this:
( We cannot do a calorie-comparison chart because minerals and vitamins do not provide calories.) EFFECTS Literature on the fortified natural-foods diet teems with testimonials to its healing powers. All sorts of conditions are said to have been improved— from white hair darkened by taking two tablespoons of blackstrap molasses daily for six months; 11 to eczema healed with brewers’ yeast, desiccated liver, lecithin, and prune juice; to brain-injured children helped by an intense nutritional and supplementational program. 12 The fortified natural-foods diet is certainly a great improvement over the S. A. D, and changing from the latter to the former can indeed be of great benefit. Three aspects of the diet can be credited for the improvements reported:
• Harmful foods are not eaten, thus creating a sort of“ negative healing”; that is, you feel better because you don’ t eat foods that make you sick.
• Healthful foods are consumed, creating“ positive healing,” or a condition of health via better nourishment.
• Supplementary vitamins and minerals that have a positive effect because THERE IS A DEFINITE DEFICIENCY STATE IN THE BODY. While the use of supplements as medicine to treat specific conditions is eminently rational,“ the shotgun approach” 13 of general nutritional supplementation is not. Taking sixteen or twenty nutrients in pill form“ just in case” there aren’ t enough in the wholesome foods also eaten indicates fear and mistrust of food, and of nature itself. As long as the fear of not having enough motivates our choices, we will always be deficient, and nothing will ever be enough. A Commentary on Nutritional Supplements Vitamins are organic compounds( containing carbon and hydrogen) found in all foods, vegetable and animal. Their presence is needed for the smooth metabolism of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, the formation of body tissues, and cellular energy exchanges. Some vitamins can be obtained by bacterial syntheses in the intestines( mostly the B vitamins) or on the skin in the presence of sunlight, as with vitamin D. On the whole, however, vitamins must be obtained from food.