Is it necessary to take nutritional supplements?

Question

Dr. Felicia Stoler, DCN, MS, RDN, FACSM, FAND · Answer

Is it necessary to take nutritional supplements? Well, I think the answer is yes. As much as I'm a huge fan of getting all the nutrients you need from your food, the reason why I think it's important to add supplements to your life-- remember the word is supplement. It's not meal replacement. It's not replacing nutrients from food. But the reason why we should be consuming it is first of all, depending on your caloric intake needs, you may not be able to get all the nutrients that you need from your food every single day. And the other reason to consider supplements is adding on what I consider clinically relevant, or clinically significant levels of nutrients that are beneficial for maintaining health, for preventing certain diseases. And that is the main reason why I feel that supplementation is beneficial.

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS · Answer

This is a tricky question and it's been one that I've probably been answering ever since I started a hundred years ago in this field. Is it necessary to take nutritional supplements? And of course, that depends on your definition of the word necessary. Of course it's not necessary. And there have been people throughout history who have been very healthy and long lives without nutritional supplementation in different parts of the world. The question is, why would you want to? I mean, nutritional supplements are a high-tech delivery system for nutrients that your body absolutely needs. Can you get these nutrients elsewhere in food while the American dietetic Association has been saying? So since they were formed in 1917, can you get optimal levels from the food know, you can't and and many of the nutrients that we supplement with are just not present in the food supply earlier and foods that nobody eats like, animal organ meats, and things like that. So there are lots of reasons to take nutritional supplements. It's not necessary but neither is indoor plumbing. Yeah. But you know why would you want to live without it?

Lauren Link, MS, RD, CSSD · Answer

This is a good question and it's a common question. I would say if I am giving a nutshell answer, no, it is not necessary to take nutritional supplements. With that said, definitely a lot of people probably even fair to say most people would benefit from a multivitamin. And the reason for that is that a multivitamin doesn't have absurd amounts of anything, but instead has kind of a reasonable dose of a lot of Stuff. And I often refer to that as an ability to kind of like fill in gaps maybe and the reality is that most people's diets are not super complete. Maybe not super balanced all the time probably lack as many fruits and vegetables and things like that, that they should have. So a multivitamin can be really helpful in that sense of kind of filling in those gaps. Doesn't mean though, that it should just be any multivitamin. We definitely want to pick one, that is third-party certified. And so I would recommend looking for USP certification or NSF for sport, informed sport. Any of those will be a good indication that the product is actually containing what it says it is. So you still have to be careful even for a multivitamin Other nutrients or other supplements. That people might take, I would not feel comfortable saying. Yeah, everybody needs this or most people even need this, but it's true to say that a lot of people can benefit from things like vitamin D, for instance, especially if you live in northern states or a northern hemisphere, where you're not getting as much UV, or you spend a lot of time indoors, you would probably benefit from a quality vitamin D product, but you can get too much of even a good thing like vitamin D. So that's why it's important for other. Ants especially anything that's kind of singled out. And has a lot of that ingredient. You really should talk to a doctor or dietitian and maybe even consider getting tested before you just blindly supplement. But passed a multivitamin. And like I said, maybe some individual nutrients like vitamin D, everybody does not need to take a whole bunch of nutritional supplements and I would absolutely recommend focusing on your diet first

Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RD, LD · Answer

All right, the question is is it necessary to take nutritional supplements? So this is going to depend on what your diet looks like, right? So if your diet is for the most part nutrient-dense, you're getting a lot of vitamins and minerals you're getting healthy fats. You're getting lean sources of protein, then maybe the only supplement you might have to consider is going to be minimal. So a lot of times with my patients whose diets are really nutrient dense. Sometimes I'll suggest a multivitamin, maybe once a week, maybe once or twice a week. Depending on what their diet looks like and their needs. I also might be recommending an omega-3 fatty acid, it could be plant-based or marine-based. Many of my patients are doing marine-based, because the studies are very strong with Marine based omega-3, supplementation, with depression, and anxiety. So that's one of the benefits there. And then anything, that's kind of an offshoot. So it could be probiotics, magnesium, for muscle, cramping, things like that. For the most part, though, if you have a nutrient dense, Diet your diet will provide pretty much everything you possibly need outside of kind of those outliers. So I think that's why it's important to meet with your physician, talk with your dietitian, figure out okay, where are places, where a supplement make, might make more sense, but I think across the board, we don't all need supplements. Let's look at food as our medicine and then if we can't get something through food, how do we supplements? How do we choose a good supplement company? What's the dose? That's The next question, we need to be asking.

Emily Zorn, MS, RD · Answer

Is it necessary to take nutrition supplements? So long story short, no, there have been research done saying that people who eat enough calories, who don't cut out, any food to eat, you know, meat vegetables, fruits, whole grains, the whole gamut. They are probably just fine and probably don't need any nutritional supplements. Now, I will say it's always best if we can get everything we need from food but that's not always the case. For example, if One is vegan, they're probably not getting enough vitamin B12. So in that case I would definitely recommend a nutrition supplement. If someone is deficient in anything say iron and they've been trying to eat more red meat and trying to get the numbers up and it's not working, then definitely take iron or another example, if someone is trying to gain muscle and their protein needs are so high that it's just really, really challenging to eat enough protein from actual food that is when it would be a great idea to have some protein supplements, like a protein powder or something like that. So food first is what we pretty much always preach but there are times where we can't get everything we need from food, or it's not optimal. So, when those cases, it's always good to go to a supplement but make sure that it is safe and third-party tested and that it's actually something that is going to help you with what you're trying to achieve.

Bob Seebohar, MS, RD, CSSD · Answer

Oh interesting question is it necessary to take nutrition supplements? Well in my mind in my practice what I teach athletes is there's three different kinds or categories of supplements, there are micro nutrient and those are things like calcium and zinc and iron. And vitamin D, multivitamins there are sports supplements, those are things like energy bars, gels sport drinks, all those wonderful, great things, and ergogenic, AIDS, organic AIDS are performance-enhancing. So, those are things like create in like night. It's like hmb caffeine, right? So do you need to take supplements as a necessary? I like to do blood work testing with athletes first to find, if there are deficiencies. If there are deficiencies, we look at food and we can look at what we can do with food. First, if the deficiency is too much, maybe a supplement is required. Absolutely. But in terms of supplements, is it necessary? I think, as athletes we do focus on food, but we Also need to keep an open mind that certain times of the year. We might actually need to take nutrition supplements such as Sports supplements or perhaps ergogenic Aid. So I think it's pretty open. I think the bottom line to is get some blood work. Testing done. See if you have any nutritional deficiencies first to see if you need to take micro nutrient supplements and then you start to layer on what other supplements energy bars sport, drinks protein powders caffeine if you use those for sport then you can make that educated decision.

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"Is it necessary to take nutritional supplements?"