Obtaining all vitamins and minerals from FOOD alone...

[NU_nutrition_TS]

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Having apparent fitness gurus and such telling you that having a defiency of one mineral/vitamin can hamper muscular gains drastically kinda stuck in my head... is there much truth in this? As the thread touched upon - our ancestors always got by, carrying huge loads and getting stronger. Also, there has been some pretty huge gains with people dirty bulking without multivitamins etc...

In the human body - as in much of nature - synergy is often at work. Synergy can be summed up in the simple, popular saying: "The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts". OK, maybe that is not so clear or concise after all! Perhaps another way of looking at it is this: A number of complimentary factors working together can often achieve more than any of them could working alone.

Certain nutrients (especially certain vitamins and minerals) that you only require in small daily amounts will have a critical role in certain major bodily functions such as protein synthesis. So, yes, a deficiency of vitamin A, for example, may impact heavily on optimal protein digestion and absorption as could a deficiency in dietary fats (especially saturated). But neither work in isolation but together along with many other factors. So who is to say whether a particular level of one is optimum without taking into account the levels of all the others? Maybe it is no accident that vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin and that dietary fats are a rich source. Taking lots of vitamin A without dietary fat may still leave you deficient whereas a modest amount taken along with dietary fat may be optimal due to superior absorption and assimilation.

That is the problem with reductionist science taken to extremes - it looks at individual cogs instead of the whole machine!

[daffy]

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In the human body - as in much of nature - synergy is often at work. Synergy can be summed up in the simple, popular saying: "The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts". OK, maybe that is not so clear or concise after all! Perhaps another way of looking at it is this: A number of complimentary factors working together can often achieve more than any of them could working alone.

Certain nutrients (especially certain vitamins and minerals) that you only require in small daily amounts will have a critical role in certain major bodily functions such as protein synthesis. So, yes, a deficiency of vitamin A, for example, may impact heavily on optimal protein digestion and absorption as could a deficiency in dietary fats (especially saturated). But neither work in isolation but together along with many other factors. So who is to say whether a particular level of one is optimum without taking into account the levels of all the others? Maybe it is no accident that vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin and that dietary fats are a rich source. Taking lots of vitamin A without dietary fat may still leave you deficient whereas a modest amount taken along with dietary fat may be optimal due to superior absorption and assimilation.

That is the problem with reductionist science taken to extremes - it looks at individual cogs instead of the whole machine!

Very true, it's certainly been shown that vits A, D, E and K and synergistic, work together, and it's also been shown that fat soluble vitamins, and fat derived supplements (fish oil, sesamin, CLA), get absorbed better when taken with fat.

[MiniHulk]

Take multivitamins with fat, if at all then?

Which vitamins are actually depleted after a heavy workout? Is it mainly zinc and magnesium? (hence zma'a role) or do we need to get more of the broad spectrum than average Joe's?

[daffy]

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Take multivitamins with fat, if at all then?

Which vitamins are actually depleted after a heavy workout? Is it mainly zinc and magnesium? (hence zma'a role) or do we need to get more of the broad spectrum than average Joe's?

Don't know about the second part of the question, but for the first part, I was talking about fat soluble vitamins, not water soluble ones like B and C. Best advice is to take multivits with food, greater chance of absorption, and if you're taking fat soluble vitamins, then yes, take them with a meal that has a bit of fat in it.

[James]

As a bit of a update, I have recently addressed my diet to be as healthy and vitamin/mineral rich as possible, it has allowed me to drop many of the supplements I use (fish oil, vit c, vit d etc), it may even allow me to drop a multi-vit, I am going to be dropping from alpha male tablets for sure, just using a one tab a day vit as a basic back up in the future.

For reference, in case you were interested in what I'm now eating - James' Big Fat Training Log

Hope it helps out!

[craig1014]

*** Long Post Warning ***

So I have had quite a lot of time on my hands recently, and having being inspired by this thread, I had a stab at setting up a menu in order to achieve this.

I decided that the RDA for most vitamins was useless, as they are the level required to prevent deficiency, not allow for optimum health. As I quite often train twice a day, and my training is of quite an intense level, I believe that I need far more vitamins and minerals for optimum health than both the RDA and your average Joe. To come up with the amounts that I would need, I used two books; The Sports Nutrition Pocket Guide, by Michael Colgan, and The Optimum Nutrition Bible by Patrick Holford. I know people here have issues with both these guys, but they seem to have researched extensively into vitamins and minerals, and come up with a good daily intake value. Their values often differed, with PH generally being lower than MC, so I decided that I would use PH as my minimum value. Below are the tables showing the levels prescribed by PH and MC, along with my current supplemental levels:

Vitamins

Vitamin MC PH Current Level
A (RE) 1000-3000 2500 1000
B1 (mg) 10-150 35 65
B2 (mg) 10-100 35 65
B3 (mg) 25-50 85 40
B5 (mg) 20-200 100 140
B6 (mg) 15-75 75 45
B12 (mcg) 25-250 25 750
Folic Acid (mcg) 400-2000 800 1600
Biotin (mcg) 600-5000 225 400
C (mg) 2000-5000 2000 2160
D (IU) 400-800 430 5200
E (IU) 400-1600 300 266
K (mcg) 200-1000 0 50

Minerals

Mineral MC PH Current Level
Calcium (mg) 2000 1000 1500
Phosphorus (mg) 300-1000 800 280
Potassium (mg) 500-2000 2000 50
Magnesium (mg) 400-1800 500 348
Iron (mg) 15-25 20
Zinc (mg) 15-50 20 35
Copper (mg) 1-5 0 1.7
Iodine (mcg) 150-300
Chromium (mcg) 200-400 125 200
Selenium (mcg) 100-600 100 360
Manganese (mg) 2-5 10 3
Molybdenum (mcg) 100-300 1 50
Boron (mg) 10 0 4
Vanadium (mcg) 25-100 0 100
CoQ10 (mg) 100 10-50 95

I then researched some foods that I knew were nutritious, and also foods that I eat a lot of, on nutritiondata.com, to get the vitamin and mineral values for these foods. From that, I made a 4-day rotating food list. The foods can be eaten in any order, and however you want them, and you can add more foods to the list, but you have to eat the amount of foods on the list on each day. I applied my current dietary principles to the list, so they are pretty much Paleo (i.e. dairy and grain free), and also should fit into the Anabolic Diet by being low-carb (except for post-training fruit) and higher protein/fat. I would probably have a cheat meal every 7 days, which would result in some of the foods getting dropped on place of the cheat meal, which would slightly affect the vitamin/mineral intake for that day (but I could cheat with a multivit!).

Here are the 4 daily food lists:

Menu A - 200g crab, 200g strawberries, 100g carrots, 10g coriander, 1/2 melon, 250g chicken, 100g spinach, 1xpepper, 100g almonds, 3xtomato, 3xcelery, 100g cashews, 500g chicken, 100g spinach, 3xeggs, 1xbrazil

Menu B - 200g salmon, 200g blueberries, 10g coriander, 100g broccoli, 1/2 melon, 250g chicken, 100g spinach, 1xpepper, 100g almonds, 3xtomato, 3xbeetroot, 100g Peanut Butter, 500g mince, 100g kale, 100g mushrooms, 3xeggs, 1xbrazil

Menu C - 200g Mackerel, 200g blackberries, 100g carrots, 10g coriander, 1/2 pineapple, 250g chicken, 100g spinach, 1xpepper, 100g almonds, 3xcelery, 3xbeetroot, 100g cashews, 500g beef, 100g spinach, 3xeggs, 1xbrazil.

Menu D - 200g Herring, 200g strawberries, 100g broccoli,10g coriander, 1/2 pineapple, 250g chicken, 100g spinach, 1xpepper, 100g almonds, 3xtomatoes, 3xbeetroot, 100g peanut butter, 500g chicken, 100g kale, 100g mushrooms, 3xeggs, 1xbrazil

Putting menu A into a meal plan:
Breakfast - Tom Yum soup with crab+coriander, followed by carrot sticks and strawberries.
Post-training - 1/2 melon
Lunch - chicken with salad (spinach, pepper, tomato, celery) and almonds
Snack - cashews
Dinner - chicken curry with spinach
Pre-bed - Eggs and brazil nut.

Obviously its a lot of food, and will be expensive (and fairly impractical), and it is tailored more to my likes and eating patterns that other peoples!

Here are the average values for the 4 days:

Kcal 3164
Fat 161
Pro 281
CHO 127
A 35128
B1 1.9
B2 4.1
B3 98.74
B5 13.8
B6 7.2
B12 27.4
Folic Acid 1248
Biotin 178
C 716
D 1005
E 36
K 1320
Calcium 780
Phosphorus 3846
Potassium 7694
Magnesium 1402
Iron 26.5
Zinc 34.8
Copper 5.3
Iodine 161.5
Chromium 274
Selenium 404
Manganese 13.6
Molybdenum 130
Boron 5
Vanadium 0
CoQ10 29

I also average 4.3g of omega-3. To correct some of the lower numbers, I will also add 40g of radishes (40mcg of Vanadium) and 10g of kelp (200mcg iodine) per day.

I’m still far too low on some numbers, such as vit B, E, D, CoQ10 and calcium, which will require some supplementation, but at a much lower level than before. Most of my vitamin K is from plants, which isn’t the K2 variety, so I will also supplement with that. The addition of 100g of whey also brings in 400mg calcium, and can be used post-training.

So, what do you think? I haven’t paid much attention to the type of vitamin A- can anyone explain what effect this will have?

[Elvis]

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Phosphorus 3846

which foods of your foods are good for this?

[craig1014]

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which foods of your foods are good for this?

All the nuts are high in phosphorus (almonds = 489mg/100, cashews 600mg/100g). Meat products are also high - beef with about 1200mg/500g. The fish stuff (crab, herring etc.) have between 400-500mg/200g portion, and then fruit and veg has small amounts that add up throughout the day.

[James]

I would personally want to include some fermenting foods, an improvement in gut flora/digestion would further increase the availability of all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals you are going to need to digest from foodstuffs - yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut/kimchi, miso/natto etc etc

Kudos for doing this, I am going to spend some serious time at setting up something similiar once I am settled abroad, so your vitamin and mineral recommends are SUPERB, saves me having to work much more out... thanks, Craig!

[craig1014]

Agree with the fermented food etc. I didn't look particularly at replacing the probiotics and digestimax that I currently take - that would potentially be the next step. Do you know of any data regarding amount of bacteria found in these fermented foods? That would be useful in doing a like-for-like comparison.

Also, if anyone has any ideas for foods that are naturally high in the B vitamins, vitamin E or CoQ10 that i could add in that would be great. I think heart is high in CoQ10, but i would struggle to eat that!