Transcript What kind of vitamins,minerals,proteins...do we need to take daily

What kind of
vitamins,minerals,proteins do we
need to take daily ? Where and
how can we get them?
Vitamins and Minerals: How Much Should You Take?
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How much of a vitamin or mineral supplement should you take? Are your daily
multivitamins enough, or should you worry about vitamin deficiency? Could you
already be taking too much? It can be hard to tell -- especially with so many
nutritional terms, abbreviations, and numbers out there. Here’s what you need to
know.
To help people better understand the minimum and maximum doses for supplements,
the Institute of Medicine has established some guidelines.
The RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance) and the AI (Adequate Intake) are
the amounts of a vitamin or mineral you need to stay healthy and avoid nutritional
deficiencies. They are tailored to women, men, and specific age groups.
The UL (Tolerable Upper Intake Level) is the maximum amount of daily vitamins
and minerals that you can safely take without risking an overdose or serious side
effects. For certain nutrients, the higher you go above the UL, the greater the chance
of having problems.
Separate from the RDA and the UL, the FDA uses a different measurement of
nutritional intake.
The DV (Daily Value) is the only measurement you’ll find on food and supplement
labels. That’s because space is limited, and there’s a need for one single reference
number. That number is the amount of a vitamin or nutrient that a person should get
for optimum health from a 2,000 calories-a-day diet. The DV is sometimes the same
as the RDA and sometimes not.
Vitamins and Minerals: How Much Is Too Much?
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Because high doses of some supplements can have risks, how do you know when it’s
OK to take more than the RDA or DV and when it isn’t?
One way is to look for the UL (tolerable upper intake level) of a nutrient. The Institute
of Medicine sets the UL after reviewing studies of that nutrient.
With many vitamins and minerals, you can safely take a dose much higher than the
RDA or DV without coming close to the UL. For instance, the average person can
take more than 50 times the RDA of vitamin B6 without reaching the upper limit.
However, some people develop neuropathy symptoms with these higher levels of B6.
So you should always be cautious. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Some supplements are riskier than others. With some vitamins and minerals, the
upper limit is pretty close to the RDA. So it’s easy to get too much. For example, a
man taking just over three times the RDA of vitamin A would be taking more than the
upper limit. High doses of vitamin A -- and other fat-soluble vitamins like E and K -can build up in the body and cause toxicity. Other risky supplements include the
minerals iron and selenium.
Supplements are designed to supplement the diet. Popping dietary supplements
is not the answer to good health. Experts recommend eating a well-balanced, healthy
diet and taking supplements to fill in any nutritional gaps. Or you can take a oncedaily multivitamin with minerals for nutritional insurance.
• PROTEINS: Body building, growth and
repair of damaged tissues are the major
role of proteins although they can also
be a source of energy and be converted
to body fat if not used during
activities. Meats that are lean, cheese,
eggs, dairy products (milk) and a little
from bread, beans and peas – these are
all sources of proteins for our diet.
• FATS: Another supply of energy comes
from the group called ’fats’ and obviously
if we don’t use up the chemical energy
that is contained in them our bodies try
to build up a ‘store’ for future use – just
in case we run out of them in our diets –
this means we store them as ’body-fat’.
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VITAMINS: There are many different classes of vitamins and you will have
heard of ones like Vitamin C, in fruit. Without vitamins many of our body
processes cannot be done as well as they might. Building bones and strong
teeth is one example you will certainly have heard of. In times when foods
that contained vitamins weren’t available – such as on long early sea
voyages – problems associated with deforming bones and poor teeth were
well known. It became essential to visit islands to get fresh supplies of fruit
and vegetables whenever possible. You can probably just go into the
kitchen ! When vitamins were first identified they were classed into two
groups – one called vitamin A – this was soluble in fat – and the other was
vitamin B that was soluble in water. Other vitamins were found as time went
by and these were labelled with other
CARBOHYDRATES: We have said that ‘Food is Fuel’ and is a store of
chemical
letters – C, D, E and so on. You may have heard of B1, B2 etc – well this
came about because the class of vitamins into just one group of B was too
broad. There were actually many separate ones that were discovered later
that were found to be soluble in water – hence the numbered vitamins in the
B-group.
• MINERALS: Minerals are things like Zinc, Iron, Magnesium,
Calcium, etc. They are all minerals found in the world around us –
not surprising that we need them for all the chemical processes that
go on inside us! Iron is essential for our blood to be able to carry
oxygen round the body – and without oxygen our muscles can’t
work properly. If you have ever walked around at very high altitudes
(where there is less oxygen in the atmosphere) you will know how
breathless you can get. We get Iron from some green vegetables,
liver, beef &lots of other sources. It is best eaten from different foods
-some don’t let us absorb it quite so easily by just eating those
foods.
Created by Dicianu Andreea