With Nutrition, Enough
is Not Necessarily Enough
By Don Bennett, DAS

I'm often asked, "Am I getting enough calcium (or some other nutrient)." First let's define "enough". Obviously we need enough of all the nutrients our body requires for optimal healing and optimal health to have optimal healing and optimal health. But when you think about it, we need to consume more than enough. Why more? Well, when it comes to the nutrient intake issue, there can be only three scenarios:

1) Every month we get exactly the right amount of each nutrient we need for the month, no more, no less. But since this is virtually impossible, let's eliminate this scenario and look at the other two remaining possibilities:

2) We get less than we need

3) We get more than we need

Of those two, which one do you think the human body would choose? Number three, of course! Getting less than we need on a regular basis will be a recipe for disaster that will more than likely give us a very unsettling surprise at some point down the road. So the only logical scenario is getting more than we need. But don't worry, the body is designed for this scenario; it has the ability to get rid of any overages (after it stores whatever it wants to store).

Now, if you think the general population is getting more nutrients than they need, think again. There's plenty of evidence that the nutritional quality of our soils has been declining for decades. And why not? Growing more crops on a piece of land than Nature would ever have imagined, and then only replenishing two out of dozens of nutrients, well, that's another recipe for tons of less-than-optimal health. It's meant for us to eat food that grows, not food that is grown for us by us. But technology that has enabled an ever-increasing population has been able to feed it, however this doesn't mean we're all eating a diet that allows us to thrive… surviving is not the same as thriving when it comes to quality (and quantity) of life.

And although those raw vegans who are eating according to some raw food book will survive far better than those eating a Typical Western Diet, if you're eating a raw food diet for health reasons, then I'm assuming you would rather thrive, which entails having the best health your genetics will allow. And for that scenario to be your scenario, you need more than enough of all the nutrients your body requires for optimal health to be sure you get enough, and the odds of you getting this from foods grown by the agri-industry is slim to none (please don't shoot the messenger, and please don't have a knee-jerk reaction of "this can't be true" because you'd rather it not be true). A for-profit food industry grows fruits and veggies for size, appearance, yield, shelf-life, pest-resistance, growth-rate, and sugar-content but not for nutritional content. And why should they! This would cost more, and the government is not mandating that they do it, and consumers are not asking for this in large enough numbers, so they don't.

And if you are dealing with any sort of ill health, the odds are that a contributing factor to the issue you're dealing with is nutritional insufficiencies/deficiencies. So now "enough" must include enough nutrients to deal with those insufficiencies/deficiencies, which will be more than is normally required when you have "whole body tissue sufficiency" of all the nutrients your body requires for optimal health. Look at it as having to temporarily take an unnatural amount of a nutrient to deal with an unnatural ill health condition; unnatural because you would have never developed it many millennia ago. So it's one unnatural scenario to deal with another equally unnatural scenario. And we're not talking about mega-mega doses, but we're also not talking about just getting the Recommended Daily Intake (RDI), which is often not even enough for optimal health (but that's another article).

That's why I take a "multivitamin"

Let's be careful not to count towards our daily nutritional intake whatever is supposed to be in those cheap daily multivitamins we can buy at the supermarket; they're inexpensive for a reason, and it's not due to economies of scale. And even some of those health food store superfoods are not as super as the manufacturers would have you believe; just because a supplement is pricey doesn't mean it's a worthwhile supplement. When it comes to our nutritional intake, if we want to ensure that we're getting more than we need so that we get enough of what we need, let's be smart about it and make sure that we include a worthwhile nutritional complement to our diet (which I do not sell by-the-way). I make this a part of my diet of the foods I'm designed to eat so that I will also get enough of all of the nutrients I'm designed to have... at least the food-provided nutrients (the two non-food-provided nutrients B12 and D+ are topics all their own). [Note: There is one essential nutrient that even the best green powder supplement doesn't provide enough of, and the diet of most people isn't either... iodine.]

The foods we require and the nutrients we require weren't two separate issues 100,000 years ago, but they are today. Sad, but at least there's something we can do about it so that we can thrive, and not merely survive better than other people. And choose your nutritional complement wisely so you don't waste your money, and you do get the nutrition that's lacking in the fruits and greens you're buying.

So when you hear me say, "enough of all", this is what I mean.

Don Bennett is an insightful, reality-based author, and health creation counselor who uses the tools in his toolbox – logic, common sense, critical thinking, and independent thought – to figure out how to live so you can be optimally healthy. More about Don's first book, which has more delicious food for thought, at health101.org/books

RECOMMENDED READING:

How it's Possible to Not Get Enough Nutrients

Why We Shouldn't Rely on Cron-O-Meter
to Assess Our Nutrient Needs