Time to bust out the rowers. By the end of Winter, we had become pretty sick of the rowers, so we haven't been using them as much. Plus we needed the running strength & conditioning. After a good month, or so of 2-5 miles per week - we are there! Time to put all that running to good use.
At GPP, we believe you should get all of your daily vitamins, minerals and other nutrients from natural foods/sources. We also believe the preceding sentence is, pretty much, "pie-in-the-sky" delusional fantasy when it comes to designing an efficient and effective healthy eating plan to support your daily, active dietary needs.
We've seen studies where highly skilled nutritionists tried to put together "all-natural" eating plans which provided USRDAs for vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients with only natural foods - and failed. Miserably. Well, they didn't really fail. A couple of diet plans were sufficient in vitamins and minerals. The problem is they were also administered at roughly 3x the recommended daily caloric intake for most of us. Also, there were great arguments as to what was considered a "supplement." I think they took liberties. Also, their macronutrients were way out of whack. Also, although several of the diets were able to achieve adequate amounts of the USRDA for vitamins and minerals (at the above penalties) they were not able to do so without exceeding the tolerable upper intake levels (UL) for other vitamins and minerals. This can lead to poisoning.
Now, the thing to realize is, just because you can't (well, it hasn't been done yet) make a daily meal plan which includes all of the USRDAs, it doesn't mean you can't design an accumulative plan. In other words, diet plans that accumulate USRDAs over several days of eating. Couple of problems with this. One, these are extremely labor intensive to design, and maintain. Like, it'll be your new full-time job intensive. Two, we still aren't convinced that doing so would put you ahead. USRDAs for vitamins, minerals & nutrients are largely based upon the VERY LOWEST rank in the quality of evidence pyramid. That is, evidence is predominately based upon opinion, rather than randomized controlled clinical trials (highest level). Also, most experts call for higher levels of certain vitamins & minerals (and nutrients) for optimal health. Few recommendations are meant to help you thrive beyond the boundaries of not obtaining certain diseases (scurvy, rickets, etc.).
It is with all of this (above) in mind that we recommend adding supplemental nutrients to your daily intake. There are many specific brands that we use to great success. Maybe someday we'll start providing these from this site. Until then, below is a chart that we use to make recommendations - in general.
Cool infographic. Please support their sponsors so that we may obtain more info like this in the future.
