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Just one quick note on Vitamin E. Although many vitamins are easily and reliably reproduced by synthetic methods in laboratories, this is not one, apparently. And the conventional wisdom seems to be that Vitamin E is one where it pays to pay more: to purchase naturally-derived Vitamin E.
How to know natural vs. synthetic?
Reading glasses may be needed as it is often the fine print where you’ll need to read which form of alpha tocopherol (the technical name for Vitamin E) a manufacturer is using. Unfortunately the technical names only differ by one letter. For natural (plant-derived) Vitamin E look for d-alpha tocopherol. Sometimes it will say on the front of the bottle “d-alpha” - great! What to be avoided is d-L-tocopherol, also known as d-Levo-tocopherol.
The cheap-o E that’s in your multivitamin
Many common multivitamin/mineral tablets can easily and inexpensively provide a great safety net to be sure that you are getting the basics that a common American diet often misses. Although your multivitamin probably contains substantial Vitamin E, the common mass-marketed multivitamins almost all use the synthetic E. Health conscious consumers will probably want to supplement their multivitamin with natural, d-alpha Vitamin E. The standard suggestion (and what was used in one of the impressive medical studies on anti-oxidants which prevented macular degeneration) is 400 IU (international units) per day.
Ignore the word “natural”
Th word “natural” is not regulated and may, literally, be the manufacturer’s middle name. Do not rely on its use on a Vitamin E bottle to make your purchase decision. Remember that somewhere on the bottle it should indicate that the form used is d-alpha tocopherol (without any “L” inserted. Just think that “L stands for Lousy” - that’s the mnemonic device I first used to remember which form of Vitamin E to select and which to avoid.
© Richard Pinneau, 2003 Your feedback is appreciated: rp@richardpinneau.com |
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