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Nutritional supplements are essential to any weight loss program because the
nutritional content of our food is so poor these days. To digest sufficient
quantities of essential nutrients you have to eat through a whole stack of
food.
There is growing research to support the theory.
Neuroscientists working at the University of California have found an enzyme
known as GCN2 kinase that monitors incoming nutrients in the blood. It
triggers a mechanism that can switch appetite on and off and direct us to
healthier food.
When eating a food that's deficient in one of the 20
critical amino
acids , the body detects the deficiency in the blood and inhibits the
appetite in order to prevent you eating too much of one thing. The danger is
that you keep
switching to new food and never find the essential amino acid
because it is not there. Finding those essential nutrients early in a meal
is essential if we are to reduce the quantity we eat.
Keep Feeling Hungry?
You will continue eating
until your body has absorbed enough of the essential amino acids.
If your food contains little of these then you will remain hungry until you
have eaten enough. In the process you will have taken on large amounts
of other less useful food like carbohydrate and fat.
How Nutritious Is Your Food?
Obviously the type of food is important too, but even fresh
vegetables are depleted in essential nutrients.
Modern farming techniques and artificially accelerated plant
growth have contributed greatly to the poor nutritional content of food. An
analysis of nutrient content of food recently compared with the 1920's
estimated the nutrient content to be only 20% of what it was then.
Fats, carbohydrates and proteins are in abundant supply in
most of our diets. The important nutrients that much of our food lacks are
minerals, vitamins, enzymes, co-enzymes, trace elements, phytonutrients,
essential fatty acids and amino acids.
Instead of eating vast quantities of poor quality food to
seek out these essential nutrients, there a two solutions.
1. Find a source of good organic produce grown from genetically
unmodified seeds which we will contain their natural nutrient levels.
This is unfortunately an expensive and inconvenient solution for most
people. This is unquestionably the best solution though probably
terrible for your social life as it would exclude most restaurants and
you'd always be carrying your own food to dinner at friends'.
2. Take high quality rapidly absorbable nutritional supplements with
every meal. By 'high quality' I mean liquid or colloidal preparations
that have high (90% plus) absorption.
Caspsules and tablets often only have absorption of
around 20-30%. Make sure they are as fresh as possible. If they've been
sitting on a shelf in a shop for months and possibly years, the potency
of some can be severely reduced.
Most nutritional supplements are made from
petrochemicals and so are completely artificial. A smaller portion are
made from plants but most of these have the vitamins extracted with
chemicals and heat and are no longer 'natural'. The word 'natural' on a
label means that only 10% has to come from natural sources.
What you are looking for are 'whole food' vitamins that
have been carefully extracted and are unaltered in any way.
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