Q. I have been unable to get enough calcium from my diet due to some food allergies, but all of the calcium supplements except one, MegaFood brand, give me gut problems. They claim that because their supplements contain whole foods, 100 milligrams of their calcium gives the benefit of up to 1,000 milligrams of other forms of calcium. Can this be true? I don’t know whether to trust my bones to it.
A. Everyone agrees that the best source of the nutrients we need for good health comes from our food. If we were still living an active lifestyle as “hunter/gatherers” and our diet consisted of minimally processed food, we would come much nearer to satisfying our nutrient requirements from food alone. In America, with our highly refined food supply, it is a struggle to maintain the nutrient intake we require for high-level wellness. Many techniques to improve the nutrient content of food or nutrient absorption are being considered, among them the processes used to make the MegaFood line of nutrient supplements.
For vitamins, the process used by MegaFood involves adding very high amounts of synthetic nutrients to yeast while it is growing. The yeast does not actually make the nutrients, but when harvested it contains abundant amounts of the added nutrients. It would not be economically feasible to add “natural” nutrients to the growing yeast, since these ordinarily cost thousands of times what synthetic nutrients do, but this process allows a label to claim that the nutrients are derived from whole food. It does help that along with the known nutrients, the yeast concentrate supplies unknown factors that appear to amplify the activity of the known nutrients.
Minerals, on the other hand, need a slightly different approach. Minerals interact strongly with one another and with every aspect of their environment. Competition for absorption requires that the amount of each mineral be consistent with amounts found in whole foods – that is, not grossly out of balance with other minerals. An overabundance of one mineral will hinder the absorption of other minerals. Since most minerals are actively absorbed, they often require certain substances that support good absorption. As well as having the balanced mineral amounts, the MegaFoods process yields substances that presumably assist in absorption, although this is harder to prove.
Cost is obviously a consideration when choosing a food supplement. MegaFood brand calcium comes in 50-milligram tablets, considerably smaller than the 200- to 500-milligram size of most calcium tablets, although the cost per tablet is similar. A common dose for either product would be three pills per day, but there is quite a bit less calcium in the MegaFood tablets. If the claim of greater absorption from the MegaFood brand is valid, it would provide an amount of available calcium comparable to the larger tablets. However, the scientific references provided on the MegaFoods Web site do not support their claims regarding mineral absorption. Research does support their claims of improved vitamin activity.
There is still much to be learned about the intricacy of human nutrition. For instance, all food supplements should be taken with food, and it is probable that such a routine would produce much the same benefits as the MegaFood process. Your decision is basically a value judgment, aided by personal experience, on which of the many calcium supplements to choose.
This article appears in February 6 • 2004.