Food supplements could be dangerous to your health

CEBU, Philippines - Those food supplements and slimming capsules could be dangerous to your health. The National Nutrition Council has reiterated a strong warning that taking food supplements or slimming supplements should be taken with caution and only upon expert advice. It was found that excessive use of fiber supplements is associated with greater risk of intestinal problems and decreased absorption of some minerals.

These days we like to take everything in a capsule. And if it seems easier for us to pop a capsule in our mouth instead of fresh fruits and vegetables or freshly cooked food, we do it. It is perhaps because those food supplements promise us a lot of things. It promises vitamins and purportedly all the nutrients needed for our body. But that is what all it does – promise – in its label is a warning that it has no therapeutic value.

As it is, capsules can never substitute good and proper nutrition. Drugs were invented for medication and to help the body heal where it may take a little longer if the body were left to heal on its own. But taking drugs as a quick-fix solution to nutrition or a quick-fix solution to weight reduction isn’t exactly healthy. It is the processing of these drugs that make it potentially dangerous because these can never substitute fresh food.

Not only will there be intestinal and absorption problems in food supplements but there is generally no established finding or link that it promotes good health. For instance, the National Nutrition Council said that it has not been definitely established that large doses of vitamin C can prevent common colds. What instead is the best sources of Vitamin C is regular intake of vitamin-C rich fruits like mango, papaya, citrus and guava and tubers like potato. Vitamin C prevents scurvy and increases resistance to infection.

Whether it is for children or adults, the National Nutrition Council persistently cautions and advices that nutritional supplementation should only be taken upon expert advice or when necessary.

No shortcut.

There are ten easy steps to have proper and nutritious food without having to put it in a capsule. The National Nutrition Council suggests 10 nutritional guidelines that are customized for the Filipino diet. Guideline #1 is to eat a variety of food everyday based on the nutrition food groups that means rice, meat and other alternatives, vegetables, fruits, fats and oils, sugars and water and beverages. It may take a lot of planning to put this variety in place. It would entail weekly menu planning, what to market and how to budget. But then this is our body that we are taking care of, not a machine or a piece of sack. So it is worth the while planning what to feed your body.

Guideline #2 promotes exclusive breast feeding from birth to 4 to 6 months to ensure complete and safe food for the newborn and the growing infant. Because there are working mothers, substitute milk formulas become the quick-fix solution to breastfeeding. But then the experience in China where thousands of children died because of substitute milk formulas should be a lesson for mothers to stick religiously to breastfeeding.

Guideline #3 advices the proper feeding and establishing good eating habits for children. Putting children on a fastfood diet is the last thing any parent or guardian should be doing. Guidelines #4, #5, #6 and #7 are intended to correct the dietary pattern of Filipinos like eating more vegetables, fruits and root crops and less of the fat.

Guideline #8 promotes the use of iodized salt to prevent iodine deficiency. Guideline #9 is intended to prevent food-borne diseases and explains the various sources of contamination of our food and ways of preventing it. Though it is not regulated yet, eating in magduku-duku isn’t good for your health either. At least dine at a place where you have peace of mind in sanitation or that food handling is clean. It’s your health and your body, not anybody else’s.

Guideline #10 drives home the message that eating the proper food is not enough, there must be exercise and abstinence from smoking and alcohol. But then there are gyms in Cebu where fitness trainers sell slimming supplements to their clients. It is disgusting that these in-the-gym sales are thriving businesses and nobody seems concerned that these could be detrimental to clients.

There are no shortcuts to good health. Taking food or slimming supplements is taking a shortcut that can sometimes cut short your life.