Tufts Nutritionists Say Vitamin E Supplements Needed to Combat Disease
Washington
DC, 25 February 2002
It's
impossible to get the amount of Vitamin E needed to combat various
diseases without taking Vitamin E supplements, experts at Tufts
say in the current issue of the Tufts University Health & Nutrition
Letter.
In
its question-and-answer column called "Ask Tufts Experts," the question
was posed:
"The
label on my salad dressing says 'excellent source of Vitamin E.'
But I thought you had to take supplements to get a lot of E. How
could food be an excellent source?" a reader asked.
The
Tufts University experts had a ready answer:
"The
claim 'excellent source of Vitamin E' means that the salad dressing
contains at least 6 international units (IUs) of Vitamin E. That's
because the Food and Drug Administration allows a food to be called
an 'excellent' source of a nutrient if it contains 20 percent or
more of the daily value, which in the case of Vitamin E is 30 IUs.
But the daily value for a nutrient concerns the amount you are supposed
to get from foods.
"Research
suggesting that Vitamin E offers protection against various diseases
is based on much higher doses, between 100 and 800 IUs. Such amounts
would be impossible to get without supplements."
Vitamin
E has been found to help protect against a number of diseases, including
various types of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, macular degeneration
and cataracts, among others. One Tufts University expert, Dr. Jeffrey
Blumberg, a leading researcher on the effects of Vitamin E and other
antioxidants, recently recommended that healthy people take daily
supplements of Vitamin E in amounts of 100 to 400 international
units, according to the health author Jean Carper writing in USA
Weekend.
Source
Foods
for the Future, via PRNewsWire, 25 February 2002.
|