''Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food''

The dietary supplements of the future come from Nordic berries and plants! Research confirms that nutritious food with elements of Nordic berries and plants is the dietary supplement of the future. The secret is dietary fiber and these are not found in today's dietary supplements or multivitamins.

According to Alicja Wolk, who is a professor at Karolinska Institutet in Epidemiology, Nutrition and Dietetics and Public Health, there is a big difference between getting antioxidants via multivitamin tablets compared to from food. The tablet contains about ten vitamins and minerals, while food can contain thousands of different antioxidants.

– It makes a difference in absorption. One example is that the B vitamin folate is not absorbed through the diet to a greater extent than the body needs. But in pills, folic acid is absorbed up to 100 percent, says Alicja Wolk.

The difference in effect is about how the antioxidants are packaged. In fruit and vegetables, these substances exist together with dietary fiber. In the digestive tract, especially in the acidic environment of the stomach, active oxygen is formed during digestion, which helps this process. This means that the antioxidants remain in the stomach and intestines for a longer time and can neutralize the free radicals there = Anti-oxidize. The fact that dietary supplements do not have the same effect is said to be because they break down too quickly.

The importance of the content of food is also confirmed by the many studies that show that those who eat a varied diet with lots of fruit and vegetables are less likely to suffer from various diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and certain forms of cancer. If we get too little we get sick, if we get enough we feel good and it can even prevent disease, but if we get too much, the vitamins become like poison that can cause disease rather than prevent it.

“The Finnish Pharmacists’ Association’s expert on dietary supplements, Merja Aaltonen, says that it is best to consume vitamins and minerals through diet, but that dietary supplements are necessary in certain situations.”

"We know today that buying dietary supplements is like throwing money down the drain," says Agneta Åkesson, nutritional epidemiologist at Karolinska Institutet.

"The multivitamin study shows that taking extra vitamin A, beta-carotene and vitamin E increases the risk of dying. The worst was vitamin A, which increased that risk by a full 16 percent. For vitamin C, neither positive nor negative effects could be seen, and the same was true for the trace element selenium," says Agneta.