Vitamin C, Calcium, Omega-3 Fats, Polyphenols, Lycopene, etc.
For the potential health benefit, many things are advertised and consumed generally.
Yes, there are studies suggesting a specific element causing the improvement on a certain problem. A specific element should be responsible for a specific situation.
You probably have heard something like these: Vitamin C prevents to get a cold and cure a cancer, so have lots of fruits and vegetables. Calcium is important to keep our bone strong, so drink milk and eat cheese. Polyphenols are great for your heart, so have a glass of red wine every day.
If such nutrients are so great, can’t we intake them more efficiently? That’s why the supplements became so popular. It is difficult to eat 7 to 8 servings of vegetables a day, but it is easy enough to have a few tablets.
But, our body is such a complex that requires more than several specific ‘super nutrients’. In other words, we need more than supplements to maintain our health. I encourage you to eat more whole foods, and the more variety is better.
There is a history of the study of Lycopene, the compound that is found in tomatoes. It absorbs ultraviolet light and has antioxidant effect, which suggests the potential benefit for our body.
On the other hand, tomatoes are very complex chemically and contain lots of different compounds.
Is Lycopene the most important among all? A team at Ohio State University did a research on rats. They caused prostate cancer in 200 or so rats and gave half whole tomato powder while others were fed the food fortified with Lycopene. The result was that the whole tomato fed group showed significantly less risk of death than the lycopene fed one.
Another interesting research is about the combination of foods. It suggests that eating tomato and broccoli together is more effective to fight with cancer than eating tomato alone or taking Lycopene supplement.
If we could solve problems only by taking several specific ‘super’ nutrients, things would be so simple. But, in the reality, there is no such an easy way.
The food nature produces us is a great complex. So is our body. It is not realistic to maintain it by taking any single food or supplements.
What we can do in our daily life is to eat the variety of quality foods regularly. Our daily meals loaded with various foods have to be the primary source of nutrients. I am not entirely against supplements and convenient process foods, but they should be secondary.
Choose the whole foods over shortcut feeding whenever you can. As the necessary and everyday activity, I hope you recognize the impact of eating on you, your family and the society.