Eating a balanced diet regularly will give you the necessary vitamins and minerals. Food supplements certainly can play an important role in a diet that is deficient in certain areas, but a dependence on vitamin pills to fulfill nutritional requirements can be an expensive, an unnecessary, and a possibly dangerous way to go.
Taking a multiple vitamin or some extra vitamin C certainly isn't going to do you any harm, except in the pocketbook, but counting on a handful of pills to make up for poor nutrition may. Excess amounts of any supplement, but especially vitamins A, B6, D, and E and iron, can have very detrimental effects on your health, including kidney, liver, nerve, and heart damage. Consuming excessive amounts of those nutrients in the food you eat would be next to impossible.
When Suzanne showed up at the student health center complaining of fatigue, she had already started taking a multiple vitamin, thinking it might help. A routine blood test showed her to be anemic. You may wonder how she could be eating that much protein and still be anemic, but this condition is quite common among menstruating women.
The cause of her anemia was a lack of iron in her diet, not a lack of protein or vitamins. Women need 18 milligrams of iron daily, nearly twice as much as men require. Suzanne could meet her daily requirement of iron by eating a bowl of iron-fortified cereal. However, now that her iron store was depleted, eating only the daily requirement of iron would not allow her to catch up, and it was necessary for her to take supplements. Taking iron supplements is best done under a doctor's supervision. Your doctor can determine if you are anemic and, if so, the cause. He or she can tell you what type of iron and how much you need to take and also how long you should take it.
Other ways to increase iron in your diet include cooking in cast iron pans (especially tomato sauces); combining iron-rich foods with foods that are rich in vitamin C (for example, an iron-fortified cereal and orange juice, and meat in tomato sauce for pasta); and avoiding black tea, which contains tannic acid, a substance that blocks the body's absorption of iron.
Along with iron, women need to be sure they are getting enough calcium. Menstruating women need 1,000 milligrams a day, or about the amount of calcium in three dairy servings. Women who have stopped having periods need more calcium-1,500 milligrams, or about five dairy servings daily. Calcium is needed to ensure bone and muscle growth and to prevent osteoporosis. It is best absorbed from food sources.
Consult your doctor for your specific calcium requirement. If you are unable to get the required calcium from your diet, your doctor may choose to recommend calcium supplements. Be sure to follow his or her instructions carefully.
The National Academy of Sciences has published the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), guidelines for the amounts of nutrients needed daily in the diet of a healthy person during different stages of life. The requirements for an adolescent still going through the development of height, bone, and muscle are different from those of a more sedentary adult.
These guidelines are used in labeling food and vitamin/mineral supplements. Although in general each meal should provide one-quarter to one-third of a day's needs, the RDA requirements are intended to be met by balanced meals over the period of a week. This does not mean supplementing poorly planned food choices by taking a vitamin pill. Nor does it mean that portions need to be measured, counted, and analyzed for their specific amount of each nutrient.
Your food should have variety. Eating the same foods all the time or limiting the types of food you eat may mean you are not getting necessary trace minerals, for which RDA amounts are not yet determined. A variety of foods ensures a variety of nutrients.
It's important, too, for you to enjoy the foods you are eating. The wide range of individual food preferences, based perhaps on culture and geographic region, should be reflected in your diet.