Take healthcare industry for example – this particular area is surrounded by latex in form of tape, surgical gloves, disposable syringes, and blood pressure cuffs. Because doctor’s offices, clinics, and hospitals use so much latex, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health have released results of a study that show a minimum of 12% of all healthcare workers eventually deal with some level of latex allergy. Even so, biggest concern regarding latex allergy relates to children with disability since their small, sick bodies are highly sensitive and susceptible, putting them at greater risk.

Fresh foods have, in past, been main source that provided vitamins and minerals essential to properly functioning, healthy human body. These nutrients, naturally occurring in some fresh fruits and vegetables, can and have, in past given our bodies what was needed for health and vitality. Today, however, because of modern farming, harvesting, storage, and food processing methods, our formally nutrient rich food sources contain lower levels of some vitamins and minerals for supporting and maintaining good health. We still need to eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables in our daily food consumption, but we also need to complement that dietary habit with adequate, high quality, food formed vitamin and mineral supplements in order to insure that our healthy, active lifestyles which include proper diet and exercise are contributing to desired state of optimal health.

Today, nutritionists remind us that we need to eat 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables including a healthy balance of dairy products, lean meats, and whole grains. But with modern methods of processing whereby our foods are boiled, microwaved, canned, frozen, refined, pasteurized, and laced with additives intended to help preserve them, our fresh fruits and vegetables are lower in vitamins and minerals today than they were even 30 years ago. One example from a recent study reported that two peaches would have supplied current RDA of vitamin A for adult women in 1951. Today, a woman would have to eat almost 53 peaches to meet her daily requirements! These losses are due, primarily to fact that food science has focused on issues of mass production, visual appearance, and physical features that motivate people to buy rather than nutrient content. The average fruit or vegetable travels 1,500 to 2,500 miles from farm to your plate. They are grown, harvested, stored, and handled with this in mind as priority of waste and product loss before being sold, trump any concerns for nutrient content and health benefits. There are extensive losses of many important nutrients during all stages of food production as our foods move from farms to our tables to be eaten. Therefore we must supplement our diets with high quality food formed vitamins and minerals in order to achieve health benefits that we desire.