Five supplements you should consider taking – vitamins, minerals, omega-3 – to give your body a boost
- We asked several nutritionists which supplements they suggest to help address important deficiencies in modern diets and lifestyles
- These five supplements do things like maintain bone health, support the heart and reduce anxiety
Vitamins and minerals – there’s a veritable minefield of choice, but should we take any? If so, which ones? We asked several experts which supplements they’d take in 2019 – and why. Here’s what they picked.
1. Multivitamins
Michelle Lau is a registered nutritionist, nutrition educator and founder of Hong Kong-based consultancy Nutrilicious. She says that while she is “a believer in food first” and tries to get most of her nutrients from her diet, “realistically, it’s not always possible to meet all of our nutrient needs all of the time”.
That is why her top supplement choice is a quality multivitamin. Pick a zero-calorie, high-potency multivitamin, she says, one that contains more than 100 per cent of your daily needs for each vitamin and mineral.
Sudha Nair, at Hong Kong health clinic Balance Health, also advocates a broad spectrum multivitamin. Like Lau, she acknowledges that our food frequently doesn’t contain sufficient nutrients.
“We follow fad diets which rob all the nutrients [and] we lack variety in our meals as we stick to 10 to 12 types of food which we like to eat all the time,” says Nair, who holds a bachelor’s degree in naturopathy and holistic nutrition, and practises nutritional therapy.
She adds that even if we opt for healthier food choices or have a “proper meal”, often it won’t contain the same quantities of vitamins that it might have had in the past, as the Earth’s soil is being depleted.