Green to Yellow, the Tale of American Vitamins

You just had a stupendous turkey on rye-extra pickles-and to wash it all down you drank a small can of Coke. “A good meal,” you think to yourself, and now it’s time to take your daily multivitamin, because, let’s face it, you don’t eat enough vegetables and you need all the help you can get. Just like that, you’ve started the process of turning your money into the next trip to the bathroom.

Remember that delicious rye bread, with all its nooks and crannies that are just perfect for keeping the mayo from slathering up your sandwich? Those two pieces of bread don’t just hold a good sauce, they hold protective plant toxins that keep your little multivitamin from being anything more than a splash in your toilet bowl.

What about that super sweet Coke? The fructose, phosphorous, and other acidic properties of that amazing drink work so well at keeping calcium from making its way to your bones that they might as well being holding secret meetings with bread in seedy, underground bars, rubbing their hands together with evil looks in their eyes. If bread and Coke had eyes, that is.

“So how can I make my only remedy from a life of poor nutritional choices matter?” you might yell into the monitor, clutching your lunch in one hand and your tiny pill of supposed goodness in the other.

The answer is that you can’t, eating poorly and taking a multivitamin will only result in excreting a multitude of vitamins out in your next bathroom break.

The only silver lining is that you can make small changes to your lifestyle to get the most out of your vitamins when you take them, and these same changes can further help you in understanding how to improve your lifestyle enough so that your multivitamin won’t have to be the shining light at the end of your dietary tunnel.

Bread, Our Daily Calcium Leech

Every day people look to common wheat bread as their main source of carbohydrates, fortified vitamins, and enjoyment from food. It does all of these things excellently, and perhaps even too well-say our growing waists.

What it fails at, unfortunately, is that wheat contains a specific plant toxin that is designed by nature to prevent small insects from eating on it whenever they feel the need to have some toast. This toxin, phytic acid, works in the human gut to pull calcium from not only the the currently digested food, but also from the lining of the small intestine, which is rich with uptake molecules, like calcium, that aid in absorbing nutrients.

Our ancestors remedied this by fermenting their grains, which significantly reduced phytic acid content, and allowed them to hunt without fear of breaking their bones during a sprint.

Fermenting takes time, however, a currently precious commodity, so if you can’t ferment your grains and bake your own bread, instead take your multivitamin during a meal that does not contain bread, or 3-4 hours after a meal that does.

Soda, Making Weak Bones Since…Well Forever

It should be no secret that the phosphoric acid present in modern sodas leeches calcium and other mineral from our digestive tracts and the foods we eat, so it only makes sense to limit daily soda intake to allow your precious nutrients to make their way to your bones and organs.

If you can’t do that, at the very least you can refrain from drinking your favorite carbonated, phosphoric acid containing beverage for the one meal a day that allots you your highest nutrient content. Otherwise known as the one with the pill.

If nothing else, at least save on your vitamins with vitacost coupons through Fatwallet.

Image by shannonkringen