Are all vitamin supplements created equal? Much of the public is not aware that this is not the case. Many people have had an experience with knock-offs before; products that are like the real thing but are cheaply made. This same thing is happening in the vitamin market. Some of the vitamins that are sold in the stores have little to no nutritional value. In essence, there are three kinds of vitamins. Depending on which kind you choose will determine whether or not you are benefitting from all that pill-swallowing.

To run at maximum efficiency, our bodies need a certain amount of nutrients every day. Just like a car runs off gas, we live off of the food that we eat, it is our source of energy. However, when you give your body foods that are poor in nutritional value, it is just like putting regular unleaded in a jet engine, it just doesnt have the octane available to run properly.

To keep our engine running, we must supply it with all the nutrients it needs. Since the food that we eat rarely lives up to this standard, it is a good idea to take a multi-vitamin to fill in the gaps. But how do you know if your multi-vitamin is actually delivering what it claims?

There are three kinds of vitamins sold to consumers: synthetic, natural, and live.

Synthetic vitamins are basically mans attempt to do in the laboratory what God has done in the real world. We have not mastered the replicating process (far from it) and these vitamins are not very useful. They are relatively cheap to make though, which is why you will see them in your local super-market with the low price tags.

Natural vitamins are real, 100% natural vitamins. The only problem is that they are dead. The nutrients are destroyed in the production process of natural vitamins. This leads to cheaper creation, and almost no nutritional value is left when they are done.

Heres an example: If you squeezed some orange juice into a pan, then boiled the water off and packaged it into a pill, you would have 100% natural vitamin C. But when you boiled it, you also killed the nutrients (in fact they started to die at 130 degrees Fahrenheit).

Live vitamins are what you should keep your eyes open for. These are completely natural and they are packaged without heating and killing the nutrients. Live vitamins are the next best thing to eating fresh fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, they are more expensive to produce, so they will cost more than their counterparts. It is important to remember that while it may be tempting to go with a cheaper supplement, you are just throwing your money away if you dont get live vitamins.

The problem is this: live vitamins are rarely sold in big super-markets or drug stores. This is because synthetic and natural vitamins are being sold at half the price. And since the general public is not aware of the difference, the low prices of the knock-offs will out sell the real, live vitamins which will result in them being taken off the shelves.

To find the quality vitamins that your body needs, it takes some searching. But they are out there! The vitamins I personally take are from Health First Technologies. They do a great job of preserving the nutrients in their supplements. To find out more follow the link below.