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Tag: Vitamin A

  • The dangers of vitamin A and E supplements

    The dangers of vitamin A and E supplements

    Americans spend billions and billions of dollars on vitamin supplements each year. But too many supplements can deliver more harms than benefits, including liver injury, joint, muscle and vision problems, and hair loss. Beware. Vitamin supplements are not magic pills.

    Walter Willett, a professor of nutrition at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health advises against taking vitamin supplements; it’s almost never a good idea. Other experts say that you should only take vitamin supplements when you are not able to absorb vitamins appropriately through your diet.

    Part of the proper with supplements is that the FDA does not regulate them the same way it does prescription medicines. Consequently, ingredients in supplements might be harmful to you. One analysis of 57 supplements found that 80 percent of supplements do not contain the amount of ingredients they claimed to contain and 40 percent did not contain any of the ingredients they claimed to contain. Twelve percent of these supplements did not list some ingredients, as required by the FDA.

    Daryl Austin writes for National Geographic that vitamin A and E supplements can cause bodily harms because our bodies absorb them differently than other vitamins; they are fat soluble rather than water soluble.

    Vitamin C  and several B vitamins are water soluble; they dissolve easily and our bodies metabolize them quickly. If we have too much of them, we excrete them.

    We are best off getting vitamin A from eating sweet potatoes, spinach and carrots, among other vegetables. Vitamin A helps with our health immunities, reproduction and vision. But, it’s important not to have too much vitamin A. Too much vitamin A can actually kill you, in the worst cases, and harm pregnant moms and their fetuses, causing birth defects.

    We are best off getting vitamin E from eating fish, avocados, peanuts, hazelnuts and almonds. Vitamin E is an effective anti-oxidant that contributes to skin and vision health. But, excessive and even moderate amounts of vitamin E can cause serious harm, including increased risk of lung and prostate cancer, hemorrhaging and, according to some experts, death.

    Vitamin E supplements have also been found to interact poorly with other treatments, including chemotherapy and prescription drugs.

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  • Watercress is the healthiest vegetable in the world

    Watercress is the healthiest vegetable in the world

    This might be news to you, but the Centers for Disease Control ranks the health benefits of vegetables and fruits on a scale of 1 to 100. If you had to guess which vegetables get high marks, I bet you’d come up with spinach or kale. But, would you believe that watercress gets a perfect score of 100 as the healthiest vegetable in the world?

    What’s interesting is that the CDC’s ranking appears to have been around for a while, with no media attention. Recently, the watercress industry has promoted the information and, all of a sudden, there are lots of stories!

    For background, the CDC has a list of what it calls “powerhouse fruits and vegetables” or PFV. These are  foods that it says are most closely tied to lower risk of chronic disease. The list includes green leafy vegetables, yellow/orange citrus, and “cruciferous” or cross-bearing (thanks to their four petals) vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts.

    According to the CDC, watercress is a superfood. The CDC gives it a nutrition density score of 100, based on the amount of essential vitamins and minerals it contains. After watercress comes Chinese cabbage, with a score of 91.99, and chard, with a score of 89.27.

    Beet greens, spinach, chicory and leaf lettuce also are at the top of the CDC foods-with-high-nutrient-density list with high scores, but their scores are in the  70s and 80s.

    Watercress is a leafy green that is related to kale, cabbage, mustard and radishes. It has a strong peppery taste, perhaps a bit like horseradish.It has a lot of vitamin A, potassium, and vitamin C.

    Watercress has been around for a long time. What’s interesting is that in Europe and Asia people have been eating watercress for its health benefits over many centuries.

    If you can find watercress at the supermarket, add it to your salads. Watercress with smaller leaves has a less strong taste than older watercress, which has large leaves. You can eat the younger watercress leaves raw, but you might want to quickly saute the large watercress leaves.

    What’s at the bottom of the CDC’s list, with the lowest nutrient density? While all the fruits and vegetables on the list are very healthy, the CDC says that raspberries, leeks. sweet potatos, tangerines, cranberries, grapefruit, garlic, onions, and blueberries are not powerhouse foods. Who knew?

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