In the yard, spring is at its height, and many have already faced off-season troubles: the face dries, the skin is peeling, and all the time you want to sleep. They say that in the spring you need to get vitaminized.
That’s the products, from the usual cookies to vegetable oil with energy guarana, promise to help in this matter – they say, henceforth you can eat cookies and automatically fight with a shortage of vitamins.
How effective use of enriched products, the SHE correspondent was told by the chief doctor of the Siberian Federal Center for Healthy Nutrition, Olga Veretenina.
Is every Siberian in the spring worth fighting with beriberi?
This condition will be more accurately called hypovitaminosis, that is, an inadequate supply of the body with vitamins, which are vital substances and necessary for the body to properly perform its functions, struggling with harmful environmental factors. Avitaminosis is a complete lack of provision of the body with a vitamin or a group of vitamins, and it is extremely rare. Fight with hypovitaminosis is necessary, the easiest way is to consume those foods that contain balanced complexes of necessary substances, including vitamins including.
Can I get enough vitamins from fruits and vegetables now? It is believed that, lying in the winter, they are useless …
In Siberia, in principle, getting all the necessary substances from food is unrealistic, just like in any other region of the country or the world as a whole. Modern man has reduced energy consumption – we spend little energy and the volume of food is also small, only to compensate for these costs. But our body is designed for much greater physical activity. If we experienced costs like 70-100 years ago, we would eat twice as much food. With him would receive a daily rate of all vital substances, without which the body can not properly work and will not. Today, it is difficult to obtain the norm of the necessary substances from food products.
For example, to get a daily intake of vitamin C, you need to drink 15 glasses of freshly squeezed apple juice. This is unrealistic. That is why the market of enriched food products is actively developing today.
In essence, they are designed to compensate for the shortage that everyone suffers. After all, the epidemic of noncommunicable diseases that has swept the world today is connected with the problem of malnutrition, inadequate provision of the body with these substances or with their unbalanced application.
That is, such products are a compelling necessity?
It is difficult to say that everything offered by the market – world and Russian – is really useful, necessary and indispensable. The fact is that the current legislation of the member countries of the World Trade Organization (and those who are preparing to join it) is primarily aimed at protecting the rights of producers and sellers, not consumers. Security standards are tightly controlled today. Objectively they are carried out, but to say that one product is more good, and another is less good, it is difficult, because it is not controlled by the state, it has no right to it. And so to believe that a product is valuable to you is your right. Or do not believe it. Because, as a matter of fact, you still will not know. But what is really important is to choose products with high medical and biological value,
How do you feel about new products with very unusual properties, for example, yogurt from high blood pressure or lowering cholesterol?
This is very similar to the situation when on vegetable oil they write “without cholesterol”, because, as it is clear, there can not be any cholesterol in the plant product. So with yogurt.
If, for example, you eat light yogurt for breakfast and do not eat other fatty foods, the cholesterol level will actually decrease. But this is not the merit of yogurt, but only yours, and it is associated with changing diet, changing habits.
Is it good to take vitamins from fortified foods?
There is a single rule: it is desirable to use those substances that carry the objectivity of natural origin, and are not an alternative to natural substance, because by and large individual substances, for example, vitamins, act inadequately. If you eat a product rich in “native” vitamins, you, besides vitamins, receive dozens of other substances that help them to digest and are necessary for their full-fledged work. Without them, they will be invaluable and unhelpful, so refined vitamins, artificially isolated mineral substances or, for example, flavonoids can not be an alternative to the natural complex of the most complex formulas, which include dozens of components inextricably linked to each other. It’s like drinking vitamin complexes – better than nothing, but not so effective,
Can we talk about an increased risk of allergic reactions to foods with additives? After all, today “enrich” almost everything.
It is necessary to look at the quality of such products. This is the first. And the second is to understand the concept of norm. You can, for example, eat a jar of natural coffee, but the naturalness of this product does not mean that it will benefit you in such quantity. Also with vitamins. Similarly, with enriched products, any medical nutrition. You can overdose anything you like and you need to follow the recommendations that apply to diet foods, they are listed in the accompanying information.
And products with calcium, especially products for children, do they really help children grow?
Additional substances, such as calcium, really help to prevent the lack of these nutrients in the diet. But in itself one substance is silly to call a panacea, for example, for growth. In addition, in the pursuit of advertising technologies manufacturers make mistakes: for example, products enriched with calcium and fluorine simultaneously, will not help improve the state of enamel. The fact is that the ways of getting into the enamel of calcium and fluoride are the same, but fluoride is a stronger competitor, and calcium in the enamel simply will not get. Therefore, my advice is this: follow the general rules of food hygiene better, and whether or not to believe in advertising technologies is your own business.
