The content of vitamins in foods

We all know that for health, beauty and youth, we need vitamins, which we perceive as an identical concept with a full and balanced diet. The main source of vitamins should be food. And it's not that the content of vitamins in foods is higher or lower, or more correctly than in dietary supplements and vitamin-mineral complexes, simply organic vitamins are digested better than synthetic vitamins.

Table of vitamins content

On food labels, as well as in the numerous tables that we meet from biology textbooks at school, to various Internet resources related to healthy nutrition, we are offered data on the content of vitamins in various foods that we must blindly believe and follow. However, in fact, to make such a table is very problematic, because the content of vitamin C in one harvest of sorrel differs crucially from grown sorrel at another time, in another place, under different conditions. Let's talk about what determines the amount of vitamins in foods.

The need for vitamins: the decisive factors

1. If your diet is saturated with carbohydrates, the dosage of vitamins B1, B2 and C should be increased.
2. If your diet is low in protein, the absorption of vitamins B2, C, nicotinic acid and the synthesis of vitamin A from carotene is automatically reduced.
3. If your diet contains a lot of refined foods (white color: rice, flour, sugar, pasta), do not expect that they will enrich you with vitamins - in the process of refining they are cleansed not only from husk, impurities, but also from vitamins.
4. Canned foods are well preserved, but contain many fewer vitamins and minerals than were found in the original products.

Now, you, we hope, it is clear that even taking multivitamin complexes can be ineffective if other factors of your diet do not contribute to the assimilation of vitamins.

What determines the content of vitamins in foods?

• vitamins in food depend on cultivation methods;
• Boiling of milk helps to destroy most vitamins;
• vegetables and fruits grown in greenhouses (alas, we are forced to eat them for most of the year) contain many times less useful substances than indicated in the tables;
• storage in the refrigerator for three days contributes to the loss of 30% of vitamins, and at room temperature - 50%;
• some vitamins (for example, B1 and A) are destroyed by sunlight;
• storage in a metal container, drying, freezing, peeling helps to lose the lion's share of vitamins;
• At thermal processing 25% to 90% of useful substances of products are lost.