Spring is in the air! We all feel like springing into action, coming out of hibernation and enjoying the emerging delicate green leaves in deciduous woodlands. Brave daffodils and snow drops have already ventured forth, so let’s join them!
So consider this for a moment. Many of us are trying to improve our nutritional status in the quickest, most cost-effective way in an attempt to keep ourselves fit and healthy, able to enjoy the great outdoors with our furry friends. Multivitamin and mineral supplements that flooded the market seemed to fulfil that need, but as we learn more about nutrition, we uncover the complex interplay of nutrients and micronutrients, co-enzymes and co-factors and the magical, invisible, vital force present in all living things, be they plants, animals or micro-organisms. These are completely missing in the multitude of man-made supplements that fill the shelves and web sites of the ‘health food’ stores and pharmacies. We have been duped into believing that these ‘dead’ pills are going to solve all our ills. The media, advertising and our sadly misguided medical professionals, all funded by the profit driven pharmaceutical industry, have unintentionally led us up the wrong path for decades, at the expense of the health of our entire families, including our dearly beloved furry friends.
Enzymes are effectively the energy currency of living organisms. When the enzymes are destroyed, there is no life. Plants are gifted the wonderful ability to absorb inorganic (i.e. dead, ‘enzymeless’) minerals from the soil, water and air, attach them to enzymes and use them for growth, reproduction and all other life processes. So these minerals are incorporated in all plant matter.
We animals find it much more difficult to use inorganic minerals by eating soil or other ‘dead’ sources. Our internal farm of probiotics (microscopic plants) does a great job of incorporating as much as possible, by linking these minerals to enzymes so we can use them, but this task is much better completed by plants growing in soil, outside our bodies. When we eat these plants, our entire digestive system can participate in the digestion, absorption, assimilation and utilisation of these invaluable minerals and their associated enzymes and co-factors.
There is no such thing as a naturally occurring inorganic vitamin; they only exist in a laboratory. Vitamins are made by all living organisms, given the right organic minerals and enzymes from which to make them. They are essential co-factors in numerous enzymatic reactions and as antioxidants, amongst other things.
Concerns about nutritional deficiencies started many moons ago, when sailors surviving on ships’ biscuits for months suffered scurvy which was rapidly resolved when they docked and consumed a natural source of vitamin C, citrus fruits, especially limes, hence the nickname ‘limies’ for sailors.
In the 1800s, Dr John Harvey Kellogg also realised the need for additional minerals and vitamins in his infamous Cornflakes. Having inadvertently destroyed the nutrients by cooking the maize, he added vitamin C and Cornflakes were declared to be enriched with vitamin C.
Cockroaches, that love plastic and survived nuclear explosions, won’t even eat white flour! White bread is so devoid of nutrients, despite the claims of being vitamin enriched with extra Niacin, it has a shelf life of decades (labelling precludes admission of this fact!). Nothing eats it, except humans and the animals unfortunate enough to be fed by them.
Enriched! Really? Imagine you are walking down the street and someone steals all your money from you. Later, they give you £1 of pretend, ‘Monopoly’ money and tell you that you are now enriched by £1. The pretend money is like the man made vitamin C with which Cornflakes are ‘enriched’, the man-made thiamine that ‘enriches’ white bread, all useless to the body because they are devoid of the vital force, the liveness, the enzymes.
Can you see the fallacy in this? This is the basis of the entire man-made vitamin and mineral industry. It is one massive money-making fraud. Wow, that’s quite a shocking thought isn’t it!
I used to take a multi vitamin and mineral supplement with ginseng for extra spring. These are effectively just a collection of man-made isolated vitamins and minerals stuck together in a pill. I had no idea what a waste of money that was until I was chatting to a friend who had been working with Porta-loos at the UK summer festivals. He told me that the screens and filters the excrement passes through were full of vitamin and mineral supplement pills, many of them still with their colour and brand name intact. He joked one could discern the affluence of the participants by the quantity of these pills in their excrement. Affluent effluent!
But don’t worry! We know better now and have food state vitamin pills. Actually, not much better as the rough treatment these delicate enzymes and other vital factors experience vastly reduces their nutrient availability.
How about food? Whole food. Raw. As grown in your garden or running through the forest? ‘Catch me if you can’ says the mouse to the cat, the hare to the dog. This exercise certainly keeps them fit. The fatties go hungry till they’re thin enough to run fast enough… Luckily for us vegans, plants don’t move that fast!
But what about supplements? We are currently living in a toxic world so there’s no doubt we need some help. Whatever we choose to give our pets and take ourselves has to be whole-food based, enzyme rich, with probiotics, prebiotics, essential fatty acids (omegas 3, 6 and 9 at least), antioxidants, natural whole-food vitamins and minerals and more….. Sounds familiar, right?
Yes, that is exactly why I developed PET Plus and why I am constantly tweaking the ingredients, to ensure we have the best of the best for our faithful, devoted companions.