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Supplement Bars, Protein Shakes, Meal Replacement Products, and Vitamin Mineral Supplements Can Be Helpful

by Dr. Donna Schwontkowski (ret.)

Copyright 2007 Schwontkowski. Call for reprint rights.

If your time is limited because your schedule is packed, the use of supplement bars, protein shakes, meal replacement products and vitamin mineral supplements can help recharge you. Here are some facts you should know.

We're all searching for a high-grade nutritional supplement. Our body needs the RDA of vitamins and minerals each and every day no matter what we are doing, where we are working, and if we are relaxing or not. What can we do to provide them?

With the advent of the space industry years ago, the concept of nutritional supplements in a bar, pill, was born. NASA astronauts needed a way to consume the individual vitamins and minerals they needed to meet the RDA, the recommended daily allowance, without having to prepare actual meals.

The Supplement Industry is Born

That's when the world of nutritional possibilities became a reality. Supplement bars, vitamin mineral supplements, protein shakes, protein bars, and meal replacements were created and the food industry created thousands of new foods in an attempt to profit from the intriguing concept. Fast food restaurants became franchised around the same time.

It wasn't long before many Americans begin to thrive on restaurant meals and fast food, soft drinks and sweets, and included protein bars, protein shakes, snacks with added vitamins and minerals and meal replacements. The new foods were all so practical and compact. Why not grab a nutritional shake or protein bar on the go when you're in a hurry? Why not choose these nutritional supplements for breakfast, lunch or a snack? If all the vitamins and minerals are added to these foods, aren't they an excellent choice?

Check your own pantry shelves and find out what protein bars, protein shakes, and snacks with added vitamins and minerals you have. But consider nutrition for a minute here. How much of the RDA do they really contain? Is it 100% of the RDA for all of them or do you notice that some nutrients have 100% while others have 33%?

You truly won't have to look far to find nutritional supplements in the grocery stores. Virtually every grocery and drug store currently carry at least a few handy vitamin mineral supplements, meal supplements and vitamin-rich snacks. Should you trust the next best protein bars or low-carb shakes? Should you get them from a health food store or on the internet?

Online there are literally hundreds of choices for vitamins, meal replacement bars, protein shakes and healthy snacks to choose from. Furthermore, there are an assortment of deals and specials to be taken full advantage of on the web. Nutritional supplements can be purchased in bulk for a lower cost online as well.

Maximum Nutrition Means Maximum Health

Using the convenient bars, shakes and meal replacement items may be easy but don't consider them part of your diet for the long term. Clif bars, Pure Protein bars, Luna bars for women, Soy Joy bars, Met-RX Meal Replacement bars, Clif Builder bars, Odwalla bars and Geni-Soy bars can have high glycemic index values which will cause large bursts of insulin that are linked to poor future health. The problem is that you will not find their glycemic index listed on their labels. That information is not mandatory yet and no food company has jumped up to the forefront of the industry to provide it. The problem with protein bars is that they're processed and the bottom line is that you need real food for maximum nutrition and maximum health.

Everyone should invest in a daily multivitamin. What I have found in my 25+ years as a nutritionist is that all nutritional supplements are not created equally. Many people don't have a clue of what to look for to determine if the supplement is a good one.

Here are a few tips to help get you started:

1. Check the balance of zinc and copper. This should be 15 mg zinc to 2 mg copper. If this ratio is off, your immune system can become compromised.
2. Next evaluate the ratio of calcium to magnesium. This should be a 2:1 ratio. For 500 mg calcium in the supplement, there should be at least 250 mg magnesium.
3. Next, look for phosphorus. The cheap supplements won't contain any phosphorus. You want the phosphorus to be half that of the calcium content.
4. Check the biotin content. Cheap supplements will have less than 67% of the RDA for biotin.

These guidelines are a good place to start. It took me years to find an excellent multi-vitamin mineral supplement that contained most essential nutrients. I have found one. If you're interested, email me at DrDonna@DrDonna.net and I'll tell you more about what I found.

Resources on Vitamin Mineral Supplements

1. Pregnancy multi-vitamin mineral supplements can be found here.Vitamin Mineral Supplement.
2. Here is an article that compares different nutrition supplement bars.Supplement Bars
3. Another article on nutrition supplement bars can be found here.Supplement Bars