Supplements will? Kathryn Pryce about the industry of nutritional supplements from vitamins to dietary supplements

© wallpapermay.com the BOOK, "VITAMANIA" SCIENTIFIC JOURNALIST CATHERINE PRICE INVESTIGATION ABOUT the INDUSTRY of DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS, FROM VITAMINS TO dietary SUPPLEMENTS Possible to get poisoned by vitamins? . In 1912, explorers Douglas Mawson and Xavier Mertz were left alone on the coast of Antarctica, after their companion fell into a glacial crevasse with most of the supplies of the group. For example, Amundsen, explorers began to eat one after the other dogs-huskies, who were dragging their sleds. Amundsen this tactic helped me get the pole, but the 31-year-old athlete she killed Mertz, and Mawson's had a long time to recover after a serious illness. Only in the 1970s, the doctors found out what was the matter: in the liver have a husky (as well as in the liver of a polar bear or seal) is anomalously high in vitamin A. in high doses, it is lethal. "Important factoid in case you planning a polar expedition," sarcastically observes in his book,"Vitamania" independent American science journalist Catherine Price. The same vitamin a would save half a million lives a year, if Orthodox green and convinced believers ceased to deal with GMOs. In the villages of Africa South of the Sahara, says Price, it can be observed how with the onset of dusk the children are divided into two groups. Some still play, others go home until the morning. These second — "blindness", nyctalopia, dysfunction of night vision. This is the first symptom of vitamin A deficiency and the big problems with the immune system: these children are three to six times higher mortality from diseases that in other circumstances didn't even require medical intervention. According to estimates by the who in 2005, in the third world, it affects approximately 190 million children and 19 million pregnant women, and 250-500 thousand of them become blind: after "night blindness" is destroyed, the cornea, and the eye may in a literal sense to emerge. (In the civilized world, where the problem with vitamin a is not crucial, the process slows down during the "dry eye syndrome". If you have a sensation of sand in eyes — maybe it's time to change the diet.)

Vitamin a could save half a million lives a year, if Orthodox green and convinced believers ceased to deal with GMOs. In 2000, genetic engineers Ingo Potrykus from Switzerland and Peter Beyer from Germany came up with a solution — Golden rice. In the DNA of normal white rice has implemented one gene of a daffodil and one gene of the soil bacterium Erwinia uredovora: together they trigger the synthesis of beta-carotene, which the human body turns in vitamin A. the Grain eventually become yellow-orange tint. In 2005 by another genetically modified content of beta-carotene in rice increased by 23 times — and it was enough to the standard portion covers the daily requirement of vitamin A. the Problem is solved? As it is not so. Last time, Golden rice was mentioned вNew York Times in 2013: 400 men defeated the experimental plantation in the Philippines, and women came to the demonstration — our children, said they are not for your experiments.

Maybe no GMOs don't need and should just give preference to healthy food — fruits and vegetables, rich in vitamins? Price forced us to disappoint you: the bulk of the vitamins the average American (and probably the average Russian) receives not from lemons or mangoes and crackers, bread, juice or milk, systematically where the vitamins added artificially. They are produced by chemical synthesis in the factories, such as pharmaceutical medications or powder for the dishwasher. If all seven billion people suddenly decided to switch to "natural" sources of vitamins, fruits and vegetables, logistics and agriculture the world would not have coped with the request. And not only they: say, are you ready every day to eat a pound of carrots to get the same dose of beta-carotene?

"The content of vitamin in fruit" will need to divide by 18 if you want to know how much of it actually enters the body. In the very wording "rich in vitamins" laid innuendo. Of all the 13 vitamins known to science, four — A, D, E, K — soluble in fats but insoluble in water. This means that when they — or their chemical precursors are ingested with fruit juice, a large part of the substance remains unclaimed. In theory, one molecule of beta-carotene turns one molecule of vitamin A. In practice, if you have eaten mangoes or papayas, at the desired reaction will take one molecule of 18. This means that "the content of vitamin in fruit" you need to divide by 18 if you want to know how much of it actually enters the body. (But because of the solubility of vitamins in the fats, notes the Price, sauteed vegetables can be surprisingly useful, whatever may be said about the universal dangers of fried.)

The very title of the book, glued the words "vitamin" and "mania" seems to be alluding to the fact that vitamins are not as good as we think they are. But the subject of attacks the Price — not themselves vitamins, but a whole set of practices — from cultural to political, that became a side effect from the discovery of vitamins made a hundred years ago.

Example? Industry of dietary Supplements, bioactive agents from the isolated amino acids to extracts from the hearts of a dried toad. Vitamins opened for all of them the legal loophole. In 1938, after the scandal with the drug based on poisonous solvent, in the United States has its own CPS — FDA, the Office for sanitary inspection behind quality of foodstuff and medicines. This Department has introduced strict rules for drug manufacturers is obliged to conduct tests for safety to health. Vitamins, like obvious benefit, the law did not apply — and with them other substances which occur in nature as components of food. Thus was born the class of unregulated "dietary supplements". After tragedy in 1962 with the thalidomide (the mothers who took this sleeping pill, the children were born with congenital deformities) FDAуточнило their demands to the drugs now in clinical trials in several stages had to prove their efficiency and safety. "Food additives" is, of course, again is not touched.

Does this mean that they are by definition harmless? In the 1980s, L-tryptophan is a natural amino acid found in various proteins, caused the epidemic disease, which is called the syndrome of eosinophilia-myalgia. It all started with spasms in the muscles and the itch — and ended with paralysis and wheelchair. After a hearing in the U.S. Congress, the Japanese manufacturer has paid to victims two billion dollars of compensation.

The idea is to talk about food in the language of chemistry is the result of the shock that caused the vitamins in the time of its debut. But the main problem is not so much the harm of drugs themselves much harm from inaction. If you're a useless substance from cancer, irreversible wasting time that could be spent on real treatment. However, when in the 1990s in the United States legislators have decided to ensure that manufacturers bear at least some responsibility for the claims about the miraculous power of some Goji berries or the leaves of Ginkgo biloba in healing cancer and AIDS, the Supplement industry has already been able to stand up for themselves — and to expose lobbyists heavyweights.

Another effect of the "incident of vitamins" — chemical terms in large print on the packaging of products in the store that indicate the substances present in these foods in small amounts, — lycopene, resveratrol, flavonoids. Why gluten and omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids care about people far from chemistry, more than, say, the question of the conditions under which ripened tomatoes and fed the cow with antibiotics? Price says the idea to talk about food in the language of chemistry is the result of the shock that caused the vitamins in the time of its debut. It turns out that the world learned, there are such substances in micro-doses change the effects of food on the body: here the sailors dying from scurvy packs — but they're better on the eyes.

Now vitamins — first of all, indulgence. Ate a ball of ascorbic acid and can afford a piece of greasy pork: today you have already taken care of health. Know that junk food manufacturers who are willing to write on the bag of chips with tomatoes, those that contain vitamin C or B12, it is just to add them to the potato paste from which the chips are punched out, not so difficult.

In today's world, where itirou salt, and flour vitaminiziruet to get scurvy or beriberi difficult. But take a multivitamin or dietary Supplements instead of eating healthy food and to be treated by doctors is, according to Price, "to insure against earthquakes where the main danger is flooding."published

 

P. S. And remember, only by changing their consumption — together we change the world! ©

Source: www.colta.ru/articles/science/6626