We need vitamins. Our very existence depends on them. While science says that most of us can get what we need from a healthy wholefood diet, statistics show that few of us are convinced that’s actually true: one third of New Zealanders take supplements, spending just more than $100 million on vitamins and minerals each year. But are they really worth it? Or are we handing over our hard-earned moolah for the privilege of generating brightly coloured pee?
“You can get by without phytonutrients but, if your body was a car, it would be like missing a spark plug. It will run but it won’t purr.”
-Professor Collins
“In theory we should be getting everything we need from eating a healthy varied ‘real food’ diet,” says Dr Clare Bailey, co-founder of The Fast 800 online program, “but this is difficult for many of us to achieve.”
Clare Collins, Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle and leading researcher at Hunter Medical Research Institute, says the latest numbers prove just how tough we find a rainbow diet
