There are many nutritional supplements available to buy in today’s society and in a world where our soil is between 55 and 85%less nutrient dense than 60 years ago, we believe there is a strong case for considering supplementation. However, not all supplements are the same.

The way in which nutritional substances are presented to the body may be broadly divided into four groups:

Natural Food (unprocessed)

The vitamins, minerals and trace elements we normally consume come to us as part of the food we eat.  The amounts of the nutrients will vary dependant upon the soil or animal grazing pasture. However this is the best way, it was the way we were designed to obtain our vitamins, minerals and trace element requirements.

Food State Whole Food Complex Nutrients

The Food State form of vitamins and minerals presents nutrients with necessary co-factors to the body in a form the body can recognise, use more readily and safely.

In food, the vitamins, minerals and trace elements are naturally associated with many different and complex food components.

The body can recognise the food components of unprocessed foods and the co-factors within those foods facilitate the absorption and distribution of nutrients.

The composition and structure of natural unprocessed foods contain special proteins, carbohydrate, lipids and other necessary co-factors that contribute to our good health.

In natural foods (plants and animals) vitamins never exist in a “free state”. They are bound in a food matrix with co-factor attachments. 

Food State nutrients, like natural foods, are complete with the necessary nutrient delivery co-factors for use. The benefit of the food co-factors makes Food State nutrients much more bioavailable within the body.

Although food is always the best means of obtaining all nutritional requirements (if grown on appropriate soil, under certain conditions) the second best has to be Food State form of nutrients.

Amino Acid Mineral Chelates

Nature does not create amino acid chelates and no foods contains them.
These are minerals that are synthetically produced but considered better with regard to bioavailability than the standard “natural” isolate chemical form.

As a “Natural” Health Supplement

Unbeknown to many people and many practitioners, most of these supplements are presented to the body in a chemical form known as a ‘chemical isolate’.

For supplementation purposes, the majority of the 13 recognised vitamins cannot be successfully isolated in a stable form.  In order for them to be technologically stable they are manufactured as chemical isolate forms in laboratories.

The following table shows the composition of Food State and Non-Food State Vitamins

As the table shows, most vitamins in “natural” supplements are petroleum extracts, coal tar derivatives, and chemically processed sugars with other acids and industrial chemicals (such as formaldehyde) used to process them.

Synthetic vitamins were originally developed because they cost less. Assuming the non-food product does not contain fish oils, most synthetic, petroleum-derived, supplements will call their products 'vegetarian', not because they are from plants, but because they are not from animals.

Animus Health Nutrients are made from foods, such as acerola cherries, alfalfa sprouts, carrots, corn, grapefruit, lemons, limes, nutritional yeast, oranges, rice bran, soy beans, and tangerines (some companies also use animal products).

To the best of our knowledge there is no single amino acid chelate or chemical isolate in our natural food, vegetable, or plant. If the amino acid chelates or chemical isolates are not present in any natural food, how can they then be labelled as “natural”? Nature does not create amino acid chelates/chemical isolates and no food contains them.

Furthermore these materials often lack key elements, which naturally form part of the vitamin or mineral supplement – resulting in the body failing to obtain key elements, which are found in foods and in food state nutrients.

Postal Addresses

Vitamins and minerals together with additional co-factors in foods can be likened to the address written on an envelope. The address with the name, full postcode and stamp is required to receive the letter. Nature addresses food correctly; when we process foods, we alter the address.

In order for there to be a successful delivery of vitamins, minerals and trace elements within the body, the nutrient letters need to be delivered to specific sites around it. The delivery address needs to be correct and able to be recognised by the system. The carriers (proteins and necessary co-factors) can then successfully deliver the nutrients. Without the address, they just can't be delivered.

Correct Delivery

Food and Food State nutrients are made up of many components that include:

Carbohydrates
Proteins
Lipids
Enzymes
Glycoproteins
Lipoproteins
Bioflavonoids
Phospholipids
Phospholipids

(Plus other support nutrients such as Beta Glucans, SOD, Glutathione and more)

A recognised, correctly addressed letter, with full name/ address, post code and stamped. The body knows where to deliver the nutrient and activate our body’s natural receptors

Incorrect delivery

An isolated “ natural” nutrient contains few components:
e.g. pure vitamin or mineral “salt” only

An unrecognised letter with no address, no stamp, not even a sealed envelope – little hope of the nutrient being delivered to the right place! Therefore it is unable to properly activate our body’s natural receptors.

The following demonstrates an example of this:

Example:

Vitamin C is not just Ascorbic Acid

Vitamin C consists of:

Comparison of Different Nutrient Delivery Forms

The following table on the next page demonstrates the potential of the above four categories.  Food State nutrients contain all of the food factors and ingredients, which bring it as close as possible to the natural food state.