The more we learn about ourselves, our world and the universe, the more we see that everything is connected to everything else. We once viewed systems as machines that could be taken apart piece by piece to understand how they worked. The problem is that when you study a piece of a system in isolation, it may not behave as it does in within the system as a whole.

We are finding this is particularly true in nutrition. Many people take vitamin and mineral supplements to assure they get all the nutrition they need to stay healthy. But recent studies have shown that nutritional supplements do not have the same benefits as nutrients derived from eating food. In February 2009, a study by the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) on 161,808 postmenopausal women concluded that those who took multivitamins did not have a lower death rate than others and were just as likely to develop cardiovascular disease or cancers of the lung, colon/rectum, breast, and endometrium—those most common in women.

It is likely that in natural foods, there are many interrelationships between the nutrients and micronutrients that act to provide protection against disease. We can’t take these apart and still derive the same benefits. Whole, fresh foods are our best bet for living a healthy life.