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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.end-of-story

 

   
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