Are vitamin supplements enough to compensate for fruits and vegetables?

One of the huge benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, aside from getting their nutritional content, is that they can be a huge source of fiber, which is…a good thing. You might want to consider taking fiber supplements if you’re not incorporating fruits/vegetables/greens into your diet.

Fruits have much more than vitamins and nutrients. Not being a medical professional, I would say that no, a vitamin supplement is not enough to compensate for not eating fruits and vegetables.

If you don’t like the crisp texture, try boiling or steaming your veggies. But you really should eat some. They give you plenty of fiber, which your body needs to help make comfy poops. They also provide you with water, natural sugar, and antioxidants. Drinking a canned breakfast regularly is just not healthy. It’s not food. It’s a food like item.

I dont think anything ever really beats the real thing…
Maybe you could try cooking them another way…?
Vegetable Lasagne, Quiche, Roasted with garlic… Mmmm
or with fruits – mix it in with cereal, smoothies, yoghurt, cakes etc!

I just made myself hungry.

No, supplements cannot make up for lack o all fruits and vegetables in your diet.

For one thing, our bodies developed to effectively use the nutrients from our food. Pills just can’t replace that in terms of maximum absorption and usable forms of the nutrients.

Instead of carnation instant breakfast, why not make a fruit smoothie with peaches or bananas or both? No crunchy texture there plus the benefits of the milk?

Even vegetables cooked util mushy retain some nutrient value.

What about cauliflower mashed like potatoes with milk, butter, salt and pepper? So good!

Carrot puree? Yum!

Or try cream of broccoli, asparagus or celery soup. Run them through the blender and there is no crunch!

I figured those supplements weren’t enough. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of making fruit smoothies. Boiling and steaming them to soften them up a bit sounds like a great idea. From here I guess I can start doing research on mixing together fruits for smoothies and some basic recipes, unless anyone has some to share as a starting point.

Thanks for all the fast responses!

Welcome to fluther :]

@dynamicduo Lurve for using the phrase “comfy poops”.

Ugh, my mother and father take their “fruites and veggies” in pill form. I tell my mother that this is not good enough, yet she refuses to eat actual fruit and veggies! I guess it’s better than nothing. You don’t get fiber from them though.

Vitamin pills give you the vitamins listed on the ingredients label. What they can’t give you are trace elements that are present in actual food. Researchers and scientists don’t necessarily know what they’re good for, but that doesn’t mean they’re not important. Not everything can be quantified and reproduced in a lab.

Studies have shown that people who eat the daily requirement of fruits and vegetables seem to get more out of them than the people who got their daily requirement of vitamins and minerals from pills. Medical science has gone a long way, but we still can’t understand exactly why the same vitamin has a stronger/weaker effect based on where it came from.

As for smoothies, I have one almost everyday. One banana, a handful of either blueberries, cherries or strawberries, or a peach, and some ice and milk in a blender. You can include all the fruits in one mix or have a different pair everyday for variety, but make sure to include a banana everyday (its sweetness will counter the tartness of the berries). I find it better than any sweet drink I can purchase outside and I know for sure that it’s healthier.

As everyone else has said, pills just aren’t the same as the real thing. Smoothies do a good job, but you can also experiment with cooked fruits, pureed vegetable-based soups, and the like.

There also various fiber compounds you can add to what you are drinking (Benefiber, for example) or you can make sure to eat a high-fiber breakfast cereal daily.

But people were designed to eat fruits, nuts and vegetables, along with a small amount of meat, so that is what our bodies deal with best.

Since when are peaches, grapes, strawberries, plums crispy? I can’t wrap my mind around that.

Get a fruit juicer, that way you get all the things you want and need, and you don’t have to do any chewing. Vitamins, minerals, fiber, everything in a glass.

No.

Yes. Take POM pills and Super Green pills.