Real Food: The best multivitamin out there.

I don't recommend multivitamins, except in isolated cases such as baby making and the very random special circumstance. Either way, they are short-term solutions made for boosting nutrition to meet specific needs for a specific time frame. 

Daily use of a multivitamin long-term is a bit of a hot topic due to recent evidence showing that they not only don't do anything good for you, they may actually do harm. We won't get into the specifics of that controversy here, but instead I'll show you a delicious, whole-food way, to get your entire multivitamin in. The best part: it's delicious and only good for you.

My patients often tell me that a multivitamin is a great way to cover your nutritional bases. As a result, a lot of people end up self-prescribing a crappy multivitamin with low doses and poor bioavailability, meaning the doses of the nutrients in there are quite small and are poorly absorbed. The other issue with these multivitamins is the excellent binders they use, meaning your body can't break it up too well, not to mention the extra ingredients such as FD&C Blue #2 Lake, FD&C Yellow #5 (tartrazine) Lake, FD&C Yellow #6 Lake, Polyethylene Glycol, Silicon Dioxide, and Titanium Dioxide (colour). Sounds delicious and so healthy, right?

Here's a better way: Start your morning off with a smoothie or work it into your day as a snack or your 3pm mental booster. Nutrients coming in via whole food absorb much better and provide lots of fibre as an added bonus. Plus, this nutrient-dense powerhouse smoothie is an amazing substitute for that bagel. 

Here are some of my key smoothie ingredients and why they're awesome substitute for your multivitamin. Cover your bases, indeed! 

Berries: Provide vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, potassium, and manganese.
Spinach: Vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, K, folate, calcium, iron, phosphorus, and magnesium. 
Carrots: Vitamin A, potassium, phosphorus.
Flaxseed: Selenium, magnesium, potassium, omega-3 fatty acids.
Pumpkin seed: Iron, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, zinc, selenium, vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, folate.
Unsweetened coconut: Selenium, copper, manganese, potassium, vitamin B6.

I like to blend this with a great mixed-source vegetarian protein powder, though whey is also great if you're okay digesting it. Add some water and blend away! I tend to sweeten with a tab of maple syrup or raw, local honey from just down the street. All natural colour. All natural vitamins and minerals. Pure liquid awesomeness. 

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