How far will they go banning vitamins?

[Guest guest]

How far will they go? Exercise, just 90 minutes walk,

boosts the serotonin level 100 per cent. A 40-minute

walk daily prevented relapse twice as much as the

psychiatric drug Zoloft on 6-month follow up. So,

should the health-police ban exercise to citizens

because exercise in high dose is medicine?

Ratan.

 

--- califpacific <califpacific wrote:

 

>

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-1691378,00.html

>

> July 13, 2005

>

> How this ban may harm the poor, the aged, the sick

> and the overworked

>

> Dr Thomas Stuttaford argues that supplements are

> essential

>

> THE EU Commission displays a sorry lack of knowledge

> about how many

> people have to live. One sentence in the directive

> stipulates that " no

> person should sell any food supplements the

> labelling, presentation or

> advertising of which includes any mention, expressed

> or implied, that

> a balanced and varied diet cannot provide

> appropriate quantities of

> vitamins and minerals in general " .

>

> To suggest that inner-city dwellers, whose

> vegetables and fruit have

> to be transported from hundreds of miles away, can

> have a fresh and

> varied diet displays an unworldliness and ignorance

> of the realities

> of life that could only be found in someone working

> in a Brussels

> office, or perhaps by a retired prime minister with

> a study in the

> Cathedral Close in Salisbury. This directive will

> rely on aspects of

> continental Napoleonic law for its implementation.

>

> The problem of malnourishment is no longer confined

> to the poor and

> undernourished. Even the rich, busy and overworked

> are also

> malnourished, if not undernourished. Commuters

> haven't the time to

> tend their gardens that could ensure the " balanced

> and varied diet "

> which Brussels assumes that we can all achieve.

>

> Commuters leave home before it is light and return

> after dark. Their

> meals are snatched, re-heated and often no more that

> a sandwich. City

> life can seriously damage health.

>

> Older people will also be affected. The EU directive

> will not only

> undermine the health of the poor, harried family on

> the overcrowded

> urban estate and city workers with their 14-hour

> commuting days, but

> also the aged. We live longer. Everyone knows that

> old people grow

> grey, toothless, flabby and tetchy.

>

> Most people realise that the brain's grey cells

> deteriorate with age

> as unwelcome chemicals distort their cells. Few

> understand that the

> gut, too, deteriorates with age or chronic disease.

> As it

> deteriorates, so is the gastro-intestinal system

> less efficient at

> absorbing nutrients, especially vitamins and the

> trace elements such

> as selenium, zinc, and magnesium.

>

> The likelihood of anyone taking an overdose of

> vitamins that could be

> dangerous is remote. The maximum recommended dose is

> only a small

> fraction of the toxic dose; the leeway is enormous.

>

> Millions of people take them wisely and follow

> instructions carefully.

> The recommended daily allowance was determined 50

> years ago for a

> war-ravaged, starving Europe. It was the minimum

> dose needed for the

> average person, who presumably would be young and

> fit. It was not the

> dose that would necessarily be required for someone

> who was mal- but

> not undernourished, whether because of their social

> circumstances or

> as a result of the malabsorption of age.

>

> Since the recommended daily allowance, the minimum

> recommended vitamin

> intake, was recommended, vegetables on sale in

> British towns have lost

> 27 per cent of their iron, 76 per cent of their

> copper and 33 per cent

> of their magnesium. Milk has lost 21 per cent of its

> magnesium and 38

> per cent of its iron. Selenium levels as the result

> of modern farming

> are becoming worryingly low in the UK.

>

> " Fresh peas " , for example, lose 50 per cent of their

> vitamin content

> by the time they have travelled from the farm to the

> greengrocers'

> shelves.

>

> Another vitamin supplement, folic acid, decried for

> decades by the

> very type of doctor who now denounces other vitamin

> supplements, has

> saved hundreds of babies a year from gross

> malformations and helps to

> prevent heart disease in adults.

>

> Many of the experiments and trials in the 1990s that

> showed the

> dangers of overdosing on vitamins have now been

> disproved. Those who

> deny the need for supplements also have to explain

> how the wartime

> recommended daily allowance is still adequate when

> our diet is

> becoming so vitamin- and mineral-deficient.

>

>

>

>

>

>

>