Sunday, April 11th, 2010

Food First and The Myth of Vitamin C:  An Apple A Day Beats Pills Hands Down

Since the beginning of time we humans have been consuming vitamins and minerals in food form.  Our cells are designed to take up and use nutrients such as vitamin C with their full array of companion nutrients found in whole foods. Isolated nutrients in supplement form are a relatively new addition to the human diet.   

APPLES WIN THE DAY
A study from Cornell University compared a whole apple extract with purified isolated vitamin C and the results are a real eye-opener. The antioxidant activity of 100 grams (about 3 ounces) of the apple extract equaled that of a full 1500 milligrams of Vitamin C alone. The skin was deliberately included in the apple extract, since it contains higher amounts of nourishing phytonutrients than apple flesh by itself.

Get this:  the apple extract contained only 5.7 mg of vitamin C, a drop in the bucket (0.35 percent) compared to the 1500 mg of the purified ascorbic acid. 

Although the apple extract showed a statistically meaningful ability to inhibit the proliferation of tumor cells, the effect of the vitamin C alone in the apple was virtually nil.  This suggests that "almost all the antioxidant activity in apples must be due to phytochemicals" other than Vitamin C, according to study authors. 

DON'T FORGET THE SKINS
Two additional analyses of whole apple extracts showed that tumor cell proliferation was inhibited more significantly with the apple skin than without.

The take-home message is simple.  Favor food first.  There's plenty of vitamin C in a whole foods diet rich in fruits and vegetables.   If you need to supplement, look to food based nutrients from companies such as Standard Process, New Chapter, Innate Response and Megafood.   Or how about an extra apple or two?  This study shows why. 

Study:  Eberhardt et al in Nature, vol 405 pp 903-904