How this ban may harm the poor, the aged, the sick and the overworked

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-1691378,00.html

 

July 13, 2005

 

How this ban may harm the poor, the aged, the sick and the overworked

 

Dr Thomas Stuttaford argues that supplements are essential

 

THE EU Commission displays a sorry lack of knowledge about how many

people have to live. One sentence in the directive stipulates that " no

person should sell any food supplements the labelling, presentation or

advertising of which includes any mention, expressed or implied, that

a balanced and varied diet cannot provide appropriate quantities of

vitamins and minerals in general " .

 

To suggest that inner-city dwellers, whose vegetables and fruit have

to be transported from hundreds of miles away, can have a fresh and

varied diet displays an unworldliness and ignorance of the realities

of life that could only be found in someone working in a Brussels

office, or perhaps by a retired prime minister with a study in the

Cathedral Close in Salisbury. This directive will rely on aspects of

continental Napoleonic law for its implementation.

 

The problem of malnourishment is no longer confined to the poor and

undernourished. Even the rich, busy and overworked are also

malnourished, if not undernourished. Commuters haven't the time to

tend their gardens that could ensure the " balanced and varied diet "

which Brussels assumes that we can all achieve.

 

Commuters leave home before it is light and return after dark. Their

meals are snatched, re-heated and often no more that a sandwich. City

life can seriously damage health.

 

Older people will also be affected. The EU directive will not only

undermine the health of the poor, harried family on the overcrowded

urban estate and city workers with their 14-hour commuting days, but

also the aged. We live longer. Everyone knows that old people grow

grey, toothless, flabby and tetchy.

 

Most people realise that the brain's grey cells deteriorate with age

as unwelcome chemicals distort their cells. Few understand that the

gut, too, deteriorates with age or chronic disease. As it

deteriorates, so is the gastro-intestinal system less efficient at

absorbing nutrients, especially vitamins and the trace elements such

as selenium, zinc, and magnesium.

 

The likelihood of anyone taking an overdose of vitamins that could be

dangerous is remote. The maximum recommended dose is only a small

fraction of the toxic dose; the leeway is enormous.

 

Millions of people take them wisely and follow instructions carefully.

The recommended daily allowance was determined 50 years ago for a

war-ravaged, starving Europe. It was the minimum dose needed for the

average person, who presumably would be young and fit. It was not the

dose that would necessarily be required for someone who was mal- but

not undernourished, whether because of their social circumstances or

as a result of the malabsorption of age.

 

Since the recommended daily allowance, the minimum recommended vitamin

intake, was recommended, vegetables on sale in British towns have lost

27 per cent of their iron, 76 per cent of their copper and 33 per cent

of their magnesium. Milk has lost 21 per cent of its magnesium and 38

per cent of its iron. Selenium levels as the result of modern farming

are becoming worryingly low in the UK.

 

" Fresh peas " , for example, lose 50 per cent of their vitamin content

by the time they have travelled from the farm to the greengrocers'

shelves.

 

Another vitamin supplement, folic acid, decried for decades by the

very type of doctor who now denounces other vitamin supplements, has

saved hundreds of babies a year from gross malformations and helps to

prevent heart disease in adults.

 

Many of the experiments and trials in the 1990s that showed the

dangers of overdosing on vitamins have now been disproved. Those who

deny the need for supplements also have to explain how the wartime

recommended daily allowance is still adequate when our diet is

becoming so vitamin- and mineral-deficient.