Conscious Choice: Vitamin Handouts

August 2001 | Health Conscious

Vitamin Handouts

by Rebecca Ephraim, RD, CCN

For someone who has the financial means, it’s not all that hard to eat in a healthy way. Unlimited resources mean access to the best and cleanest food (whole foods, organics, free-range meat, no hydrogenated oils, and plenty of pure, filtered water, for starters) along with the highest-quality nutritional supplements available. You got the money...you can get the goods!

I’ve always lamented the glaring inequity between the haves and the have-nots when it comes to pursuing optimal health — or, for that matter, adequate health. Imagine the distress a low-income mother faces when she’s told to feed her kids an abundance of vegetables and fruits yet sees McDonald’s selling hamburgers for less than a dollar. When you’re on a bare-bones budget and it’s a choice between quelling hunger pangs or building strong and resilient bodies, a growling stomach will win every time. Worse, the eating patterns being established create a legacy of unhealthy food choices throughout a child’s formative years and into adulthood.

Why is this a concern? Scientific studies show that vitamin and mineral deficiencies in kids can lead to impaired brain development, poor attention span, and academic underachievement, as well as disruptive behaviors (including violence and aggression) that can follow them into their adult years. Moreover, cutting-edge nutrition research shows that subclinical symptoms — such as chronic fatigue, lethargy, fuzzy concentration, and a lack of well-being — are often the precursors to full-blown disease.

One of my fondest hopes has been to see vitamin and mineral supplements provided to the people who most need them — the poor and the homeless, particularly children. The research linking bad diet to bad health is irrefutable. Those of us who take supplements do so to cover the nutrient gaps in our diets, combat the ravages of a polluted environment, and promote healing by vitalizing natural bodily processes. But how can the underprivileged avail themselves of the same safeguards when to them such products are cost prohibitive?

My hopes may have been fulfilled. A two-year-old organization called The Healthy Foundation (THF) is rolling out a national program that is literally handing out vitamin and mineral supplements to low-income children. The larger implications of this program could eventually benefit kids from middle- and upper-class homes, as I will explain later.

From a small pilot program at a homeless center in California’s San Luis Obispo County, THF has taken flight to embrace seventy-three sites in thirty-four states including public schools, Head Start and YMCA after-school programs, homeless health-care centers, and rescue missions. The vitamins are dispensed to more than six thousand kids a day — always with parental permission. There are many reports of positive behavioral and health changes in kids after taking the vitamins for about sixty days according to THF executive director Michael A. Morton, Ph.D., author of the book Five Steps To Selecting The Best Alternative Medicine and founding president of the American Holistic Health Association. He says parents are amazed at their kids’ increased energy, improved appetite, and increased concentration in school and during homework.

Dr. Morton, a psychologist, knows these observations are not worth squat in the scientific community. They’re merely anecdotes that need to be backed up by well-designed studies. Even though abundant research already exists linking behavior and illness to a lack of nutrients, THF wants large-scale scientific follow-up studies at various program sites to determine conclusively the effectiveness of giving a supplement that supplies the recommended daily intake (RDI) of vitamins and minerals.

Using more than the RDI of vitamins and minerals is a very controversial issue in this country. Some conservative nutritionists believe that just eating a balanced diet will maintain good health. Others, like myself, strongly disagree with that theory and suggest that taking levels of vitamins and minerals well beyond the RDI will provide necessary support for optimal health. But, for now, THF is taking what Dr. Morton calls a slightly conservative approach. "Our efforts," he says, "are also involved in looking to generate revenues from Congress to support our programs and it’s important that we have the government behind us. We’re going with what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advocates right now."

The vitamin formulation is key to the success of this program. THF’s advisory board, composed of holistic thinkers who know the value of high-quality supplementation, has formulated an exacting vitamin and mineral supplement. It excludes potential allergens and toxins such as aspartame, artificial dyes, and preservatives as well as wheat, corn, starch, yeast, and dairy. Dr. Morton laments, "Our only constraints at this point are the [lack of] funds and staff to deliver the programs and to provide the vitamin formulation our advisory board has crafted."

If Congress comes through with the legislation sponsored by Representative Frank Pallone (D, New Jersey) and Senator Tom Harkin (D, Iowa), $6 million would be funneled toward THF. Half would go toward research; the rest would supply thirty thousand at-risk kids with a vitamin supplement for three years. THF’s goal is to provide vitamin supplements for a million at-risk children a day in the United States. Any consumer can stoke this effort by writing his or her congressmen to support the legislation for Vitamin Relief USA-Children First. In addition, THF is looking for "visionary philanthropists" who can underwrite this cause (www.healthfound.org or 909-696-0552), which involves getting the chewable tablets made, packaged, and delivered.

What relevance does this have to our lives and our loved ones who may never stand in a soup line or receive food stamps? School kids from all economic strata are eating nutritionally inferior foods most of the day — hydrogenated fats and refined sugar riddled with empty calories and laced with additives comprise a huge part of their diets. The underlying reasons for our children’s attention deficits, diabetes, ear infections, asthma, allergies, and other increasingly common health problems can be chalked up to vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Vitamins and minerals are necessary to fuel enzymatic reactions that manage the smooth operation of our bodies. Without them, those bodily functions struggle to occur and disease sets in.

For instance, take vitamin B6. This little guy is a champion among vitamins. The human body requires B6 for the proper functioning of more than sixty different enzymes. Good sources of B6 are whole grains, beans, bananas, potatoes, kale, and cauliflower. Hello? When do kids get these foods? Breakfast? Hardly. Cereal, a breakfast mainstay, is generally a montage of sugars and devitalized, overly processed grains. School lunches are not a particularly good bet as studies show many kids discard the foods higher in nutrients. Older students seek out pizza and other fast-foods — meals that are loaded with fat, sugar, and salt and low in essential nutrients.

That leaves dinner, right? It’s a lot of pressure for mom and dad to come through with a nutritionally superior meal each and every night — even when they don’t work outside the home! I submit that, even though the first line of defense should start with whole, clean foods, a quality multivitamin and mineral supplement could fill in the nutrient levels that the daily diet fails to deliver. Dr. Morton hopes that the efforts of The Healthy Foundation will fuel other programs that will embrace the nutritional needs of all school kids in this country. "We’re talking about having this be part of a national preventative health-care policy where you’d be able to go into the public school system and...say,‘We’re willing to...provide you, as a parent, a base nutrition formula for your child.’ The tremendous benefit not only to our children and the future of our society is immeasurable and the tremendous cost savings to taxpayers is millions of dollars."

It’s a wild thought, isn’t it? Seeing that all children in this country have the opportunity to reach their full physical and mental potential, to develop immune systems that fortify against the ravages of stress, toxins, junk food, and bad water and, as adults are able to minimize the use of expensive pharmaceutical drugs and surgery. I believe that bad health doesn’t simply arbitrarily choose us. We can take steps to guard against assaults to our health; giving children a quality daily vitamin-and-mineral supplement is one of these steps. For these reasons, I have joined The Healthy Foundation’s advisory board.

Disclaimer: This column is for information only and no part of its contents should be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, recommendation or endorsement by Ms. Ephraim.

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