Are vitamins necessary?

If our bodies can't make them, we must have them in our diet.

Some Filipinos and westerners may focus on meat and rice or pasta, but lack eating enough vegetables and fresh fruits. This can lead to obesity, heart and breathing problems, and decreases life expectancy.

Vitamin pills are often sold as a solution to an often non-existent problem.

Aggressively marketed here is ascorbic acid, a.k.a. vitamin C. It's cheaply made and makes a big profit for the companies. It is added to many products as it stops preserved fruit and vegetables from spoiling.

Just eat fruit and vegetables and you don't need to buy this vitamin. Tomatoes, which are actually a fruit, have a lot of vitamin C

Don’t worry, if you get too much, the excess is just excreted in your urine.

Eat leafy greens and that will give you a multitude of vitamins.

Liver contains significant amounts of folate, iron, vitamin B, vitamin A, and copper.

The sun on our skin produces vitamin D.

There has been some interest in vitamin D preventing or combating COVID-19. At present there is no solid evidence for this. The excess is toxic.

Thiamine, a.k.a. B1, is widespread in foods but many Filipinos have a deficiency! Bacteria produced in ginamos and oyap have an enzyme that destroys B1. Heat these food very well to destroy the bacteria.

Finally, those of you who take great amounts of multivitamins, be careful,  vitamin A is toxic in excess.

People tend to eat what they like and then just repeat the same foods over and over. Few people will make healthy changes until they face severe illness --and then they finally do the things they should have done long before.

People know that we are supposed to eat a variety of foods, do a moderate amount of exercise, and avoid smoking.

You just have to do it!

Dr. Steve Lowrie

Silliman University, retired