In this day and age, everyone wants to be healthy, but in a hurry.
Many people are still in the category of not knowing that they are responsible for their own health, and they visit the doctor anytime something isn't quite right. The doctor most likely prescribes medicine; the patient goes away feeling that their problems are solved. A great deal of people are now supplementing their diets with "diet" pills, fat burners, essential oils, minerals, mulitvitamins, etc., but do not know what mix is right or when to take them. And often, a poor diet is coupled with supplementation as if that is the fix-all. So, eat the sausages and home fries, but be sure to take a multi-vitamin! Right?
The fact is, it can be quite harmful to ingest isolated nutrients apart from the food that they came from. Beta Carotene is a good example. Years ago, researchers treated and tried to prevent cancer with beta carotene, and not the whole food from which it came. Years after the supplementtion was implemented, cancer increased, not decreased!
Whole foods are the answer. A good diet is essential to good health. I tell my children, "eat all the colors of the rainbow everyday, and not in the form of skitttles!" Whole plant foods offer balanced nutrition to everyone. The only bummer I see, is the decrease in certain important minerals in crops due to poor soil quality. The soil has literally been beat up by agriculture, poor farming methods, and the spraying of chemicals year after year. It may be important to you to buy organic whole foods whenever possible. This will also help keep the soil healthier year after year.
I take supplements, however, what I tell people is that for the most part it's as if you take a food, crumble it up and put it into a capsule. I try not to take too much of anything that is in an isolated form. For example, olive leaf, an herb, is whole, and therefore is not set apart from anything but the olive. Ginseng, ginkgo, and other herbs are the same. They should be taken with caution as all herbs should. Essential oils are separate from their original seeds ,but do offer great nutritional support. Oils, in general should be limited in the diet, and should be cold pressed and organic The addition of Lignans is important in supplements such as flax seed oil, because it connects the oil with the whole seed. Lignans are the fiber, or the crushed seed added to the oil Multi-vitamins are often reccommended to avoid the possibility of a deficiency. I go above the common recommendations to say: go organic if possible and/or buy whole food vitamins such as Peter Gillham's Natural Vitality Organic Liquid vitamins.
During certain times of stress or illness and to treat certain illnesses, i believe there is room for supplementation in the diet. knowledge is required in this area though, so one should seek help from a natural health doctor, qualified practitioner, herbalist or maybe, in the least, a natural food store owner---they are usually quite helpful.