This is one distinct class of supplementary nutrient which have some very distinct advantages.  The general run of supplements comprise more or less pure chemical forms, the vitamins being most often synthetic and the minerals being those isolated from inorganic (i.e.. non-organism) sources.  In natural conditions, humans do not consume pure nutrients, but rather, we consume foods containing the nutrients.  What difference does that make?

Many decades ago, even in the 1930s and 1940s, it was being recognised by some nutritional workers and biochemists that the vitamins present in foods were, in some as yet undefined way superior, i.e.. had more biological effect than, the general run of “synthetic” or pure vitamins.  For example, a given amount of Vitamin C in the form of cabbage was “worth more” than an equivalent amount of pure vitamin C because its biological activity was greater.  It was more effective at preventing scurvy, for example, or a given level of scurvy protection could be attained at a lower dose.  This became an exciting area of discovery.  It appeared that in some way the purification of the vitamins from their natural food sources downgraded their activity.  Recognising this does not entail denigrating the synthetic vitamins or regarding them as valueless.  The medical sciences have fully documented the vitamin activities of synthetic vitamins, which can be impressive.  But is we are really missing something important when we remove a vitamin from its normal food environment, then it is important to know.  If all vitamin sources are not equal, then what is the nature of the difference?

Vitamins and minerals in foods or concentrates from foods are obviously not pure.  They contain numerous other components in quantities which dwarf the amount of the vitamins, such as protein, carbohydrate, fat and nucleic acid.  The observation that the vitamins in their native food forms are more active and effective clearly shows that the presence of at least some of these other substances is very important.  The losses of activity occur when these are removed.  There will be more to say later about why this is so.  We ask now what stops us from using food itself as the sources of all we need.

There are many people who say !I want to get all my vitamins and minerals from my food - I do not want to take supplements”.  Is this a serious possibility?  Well, in most practical circumstances it is not.  We have to remember that today’s foods have been mostly downgraded nutritionally by the agricultural methods being used.  Yes, it is possible to do it if your health is A1 now, so that you do not need any therapeutic levels and so long as you are using only the government’s estimates of daily requirements.  But you will probably need a powerful computer in the kitchen while you work and your choices of foods will be quite restricted.  As soon as you are starting from less than A1 health condition you begin to need some therapeutic intakes.  Moreover, you start to positively need the sorts of daily intakes recommended by alternative practitioners and by the health food industry.  Today, hundreds of quite prestigious medical scientists have put their names to papers stating that daily intakes very far above the conventionally recognised ones are to be strongly recommended to anyone - in any health condition - just for the sake of protection from today’s polluted environment, from free radicals and from several other hazards associated with “civilisation”.  Obviously, taking these recommendations into account, one cannot achieve what is necessary just with food.  One could not do it even with perfect food - and today’s downgraded foods makes this even more impossible.

So-if the food forms of the vitamins are the best but there is no way in which our foods can supply enough, what are we to do?  Most people who address this question end up of course with synthetic supplements.  They have to use even more of them to make them effective.  Even then they still have deficiencies.  They will not do all the things, by any means, which food form vitamins will do.

Re-natured vitamins and minerals are the way to overcome this difficulty.  The foods themselves do not contain enough of the nutrients, so the manufacturer adds some more, in the pure synthetic form to the food base.  This base may be carrot pulp, orange pulp or yeast, among the various possibilities.  These food bases are `live’ and enzyme-active.  These food enzymes now incorporate the pure vitamin or mineral into the food base.  This is not just a simple mixing of the nutrient with the food.  Dead material would not work.  Just physically mixing the nutrient with the protein, carbohydrate etc. from food would not work.  The enzymes have to work to incorporate the nutrient into the food form, making it very much like the nutrient would have been had it been an integral part of the food to start with.  There is now overwhelming evidence that these nutrients are not just mixed with the food components, but are chemically combined with various components of the food to produce an activated form.  This seems to teach us that the real vitamin is not just the pure isolated substance recognised by orthodoxy, but a combined form of it which exists within the food.  Hence, when we give or use purified vitamins we are giving the body an artefact derived from a separation procedure.  The body then has the job to do of bio-activating the vitamin for itself.  The bio-activation step takes time and uses energy.  Therefore the bio-activcation step itself is a cost to the body.  Moreover, the pure vitamin is excreted or broken down before it can used, making it much less efficient.  The bio-activated forms are therefore taken up and retained far better in the various organs and tissues of the body which need them, than the purified nutrients.

So far one could be excused for thinking that these disadvantages of synthetic nutrient could be overcome just by piling in even greater quantities of the synthetic forms.  The argument here would be “if they are inefficient, then lets use an awful lot more of them”.  However, whilst the benefits from synthetic nutrients may in fact increase with much increased intakes, that is also very far from a complete answer.  The most exciting discovery of all is that the food form (or re-natured) nutrients can produce benefits that do not appear to be available with the purified forms at all - not even at any much boosted level of intake.  For example, the re-natured form of Vitamin C has been shown to inhibit the growth of pre-cancerous polyps in the intestine and hence it may be presumed to be protective against the development of bowel cancer.  Inhibition of cancer cell growth in tissue cultures has been demonstrated with Vitamin C in a food-like complex but not at all with pure ascorbic acid.  There is evidence that Vitamin B12 in re-Natured form works to overcome pernicious anaemia in conditions where the pure vitamin is ineffective.  Sometimes toxicity comes into the equation.  Selenium, for example, is a nutritionally vital mineral which, as the intake is increased, would quite quickly reach a toxic level.  That prevents one from just boosting the intake of the pure form to push oneself on towards an effective level.  In fact the pure form is really quite toxic and one has to be really careful with intake levels.  The Re-natured form, on the other hand, has no toxicity at the intake likely to be used and, at abnormal high intakes has a third of the toxicity of the pure form.  In any case it is never required to be presented to the body in seriously elevated intakes.

Many of the “bound forms” of the vitamins are well known to biochemists.  For example, the bound form of Vitamin B6 is known to be pyridoxal phosphate.  however, this is only a binding which has occurred at the level of small molecules inside the cell.     Actually the pyridoxal phosphate is itself bound to enzyme proteins and the enzymes themselves may be bound to cell membranes.  The same is true of Vitamin B2, riboflavin, whose bound form is as two small molecules called FM and FAD.  These too are bound to enzymes and the enzymes, in this case, are bound to the membrane of the mitochondria.  hence, the process of bioactivation at cell level is even recognised by orthodox biochemists, even if orthodox nutritionists fail to use the information.

All the evidence presented in this section is worth taking into account in one’s own supplement programmes.  It is to be strongly recommended that wherever possible re-Natured forms of the nutrient should be selected.  Only a few firms offer them in this form, but it is most appropriate to search them out.