We all know that Vitamin C (referred to herein as ‘Vit C’) is good for us, that it helps the immune system. We know we need to consume Vit C regularly. We have been told since infants that oranges are so good for us because they have Vitamin C by the bucket load. But what have we not been told about Vit C?

     Some of us these days take “Vit C” or other multivitamin health supplements with “C” included therein, to make sure we get our “daily dose”. Some doctors recommend it when we are ill, and many products proudly display their Vit C content, so that we might make an informed purchasing decision. Without Vit C we become ill, in extreme cases developing sickness such as scurvy. There are indications that it may even help prevent certain cancers. Vit C aids the body in the growth and repair of all body tissues. It is necessary to form collagen, an important protein used to make skin, scar tissue, tendons, ligaments and blood vessels. Vit C is essential for the healing of wounds and for the repair and maintenance of cartilage, bones and teeth. In short Vit C is an important part of our diet. But again the question is asked: “What have we not been told about Vit C?”
     It may come as a surprise to learn that what is often marketed today as Vit C is actually not Vit C, but instead a genetically modified or a synthetic ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is a substance most mammals (but not humans) produce in their liver, but it is only one of the components that make up nature’s Vit C. We need to eat certain types of food every day to maintain a healthy balance. Our bodies cannot normally store vitamins, so eating a huge dose of Vit C on Monday will not suffice for the rest of the week, (but it may give you an upset stomach and diarrhea!).
     In Judith De Cava’s book “The Real Truth about Vitamins and Antioxidants” she defines a vitamin as “ a complex mechanism of functional, interrelated, interdependent components. Any vitamin consists not only of the organic nutrient(s) identified as the vitamin, but also enzymes, coenzymes, antioxidants and trace element activators”
     Ascorbic acid is only one part of Vit C’s complex make up. Some laboratory tests have shown that natural ascorbic acid may be useful in treating a wide range of medical problems. However, this does not mean that a genetically modified ‘natural’ version of ascorbic acid will be equally beneficial. Further, the synthetic version of ascorbic acid so often used today has not displayed, even in clinical tests, all of the beneficial properties of naturally occurring ascorbic acid. And there is now serious debate by many food specialists that ascorbic acid by itself (whether natural, genetically modified or synthetic) does not bring the same health benefits to a human body as the complete complex known as natural Vit C. So what is source of the ascorbic acid you are consuming? Do you care? You should. It may be natural ascorbic acid extracted from Vit C in real foods (today this is most unlikely due to cost) or it may be a genetically modified ascorbic acid, ‘manufactured’ from super refined genetically modified corn sugars (much worse than a true natural ascorbic acid, but often labeled as natural ascorbic acid and/or it may be synthetic ascorbic acid manufactured using chemicals in a laboratory!
     Even naturally occurring ascorbic acid extracted from the Vit C in real fruits and berries, when taken by itself can cause health and body problems. The body seeks and needs the other complex of ingredients found in Vit C to process and use the ascorbic acid. Our incredible bodies have a programmed habit of trying to make whole again the things we put into our bodies. Thus when we drink distilled water (with not many minerals left therein) our body gives some of its own minerals back to the water, so the waste water can pass out of the body in a more mineralized state – this process causing over time a dangerous de-mineralization of our body. Likewise when only a part of a whole vitamin is eaten by us, whatever reserves our body might have of the other components/ingredients found naturally in the complex vitamin, then these body reserves may be stripped from our body to ‘join’ with the remains of deficient vitamin we have introduced to our body, then leave our body as waste. So in the case of a Vit C tablet made from only ascorbic acid, your body may then take these other complex ingredients found in a natural Vit C from your own body reserves, to ‘give them back’ to the ‘lonely’ and incomplete ascorbic acid. As your body tries to balance what is missing in the ascorbic acid, this can lead to a serious deficiency in your body of the other components of Vit C. Thus in the case of taking ascorbic acid, your body can become deficient in rutin, enzymes, some antioxidants, bioflavanoids and some trace elements. Ascorbic acid thus acts like a drug to the body, not a nutrient. Clinically ascorbic acid has been found to irritate the digestive tract.
     Hungarian biochemist Dr Albert Szent-Gyorgi won a Nobel Prize for medicine in the 1930’s for identifying the natural Vit C complex and its health benefits. He also successfully isolated ascorbic acid as part of Vit C, but he repeatedly stated that the best results for health were obtained when Vit C was ingested through food. Our bodies are simply not used to coping with concentrated doses of any vitamin. Taken over time, extracts from whole vitamins can also cause severe health problems. An over-absorption from regular high doses of Vit C can also cause some of the following side effects: indigestion, diarrhea, disturbed sleep, headache, kidney stones, skin rash in infants and early miscarriage. Regular high doses of ascorbic acid can be much more damaging, particularly when in a synthetic formulation. In the case of genetic modification the jury is really still out in regard to the extent of the damage, as not enough tests have been undertaken to have any idea of the extent of the likely future negative side effects by ingesting genetically modified products.
     A study in Finland of 30,000 subjects showed that synthetic vitamin A has no antioxidant effect whatsoever, despite natural Vitamin A being known for its positive antioxidant effect. A true antioxidant helps to protect heart muscle, lungs, and artery surfaces from breaking down prematurely. In this Finnish study, the subjects who received the synthetic beta carotene Vitamin A actually had an 8% higher incidence of fatal heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer than those who got the placebo (sugar pill). The same principle applies to synthetic Vit C. The manufacturers of vitamins once made many of them in a manner which was safe for humans to consume(subject to not overdosing). This was when vitamin supplements were made from whole foods, like creating a Vit C supplement from rose hips. But nowadays, as part of globalisation, the small and middle sized manufacturer (who usually had some ethical conscience) have been nearly replaced or taken over by major pharmaceutical companies. Today, well over 90% of products being sold which are purporting to contain Vit C actually contain instead only a synthetic ascorbic acid. This includes the Vit C found in many multi vitamins, in Vit C supplements and in fruit drinks and fortified water drinks. But in reality it’s a lie – as no amount of propaganda or marketing can turn ascorbic acid (whether naturally sourced or genetically modified or synthetic) into Vit C. When it is a synthetic concoction, this adds to the damage. Most of the vitamins we consume these days, as pills, tablets, capsules and drinks, have additives included which have been made in laboratories. As well as these additives including synthetic chemicals made of artificial components, most are likely to include genetically modified components, but nearly all are deficient in the complex companion components (the enzymes, co enzymes, antioxidants and trace elements) needed for our bodies to easily process them. For example, Vitamin B is often manufactured from coal tar. In this case it can legally be marketed as ‘natural’, as coal tar is naturally occurring! Contrast this with a ‘good’ Vitamin B from wheat germ, which has more active digestible enzymes, is more alive and in tune with our bodies. How can we find out what is good and what is bad for us? Read labels, ask those who care, and care more about our own bodies and what we put inside ourselves!
     A typical bottle of multivitamins from a health food store or supermarket might also contain in those pills, extracts taken from animal livers, from petroleum products and even from faecal matter! Apart from sounding terrible, what are the problems with some of these? The liver of any animal acts as a filter, and acquires concentrations of all kinds of nasty chemicals. Vitamin B-12 when made from cow livers, can contain traces of the pesticides, antibiotics, steroids and the other hormones and genetically modified food that the cow has been fed. Why then give this to humans? Alternatively Vitamin B-12 may be made from activated sewage sludge. Fish livers can be used to make vitamin A, and can be loaded with mercury and PCP’s and other toxic petrochemical byproducts now accumulating in the sea and in the fish which live there. As an illustration of this point, if you were to eat for example the liver of a single polar bear you would likely die from the concentrations of certain toxic compounds. And this is a wild animal that lives in one of the most pristine environments on the planet! But he has eaten the seals and fish, who ate the smaller fish, who ate the smaller fish who ate the toxic compound put into the oceans from cities like New York and its coculprits. Bit like the story about the house that ‘Jack built’. If you seek more knowledge about the toxic threats to the Polar Bear (and yourself!) read a great book titled “Our Stolen Future”. In this book, written in 1997 (Authors: Theo Colburn, Dianna Dumanoski, Peter Meyers) there is an excellent foreword written by then USA Vice President Al Gore.
     Dr Timothy O’Shea author of “Conventional Medicine Vs Holistic: A World of Difference”, says. “The ascorbic acid you buy at the grocery store every few weeks, thinking you are buying Vitamin C, is just a chemical copy of naturally occurring ascorbic acid, which itself is still only a fraction of the actual Vitamin C complex. Real vitamin C is part of something living, and can impart life. Your synthetic, fractionated chemical ascorbic acid never grew in the ground, never was alive nor part of anything alive. It’s a chemical, a cornstarch derivative, a sulphuric acid by-product. In your body it’s just another drug. Synthetic vitamins have toxic effects from mega-doses and actually can increase the white blood cell count. Vitamins are only necessary in minute quantities on a daily basis. Whole food vitamin C as found in potatoes, onions, and citrus fruits is able to quickly cure any case of scurvy. By contrast, the fractionated chemical ascorbic acid has been shown to be insufficient in resolving a scurvy condition, simply because it does not act as a nutrient. (Lancet 1842)”.
     Today it seems that more than 90% of ascorbic acid in the USA is manufactured in Nutley, New Jersey, by Hoffman- La Roche, one of the world’s largest drug manufacturers. Most USA vitamin and ‘health’ supplement companies buy bulk ascorbic acid from this one company. Different labels usually claim to have a superior form of Vit C, even though it all probably came from the same factory, and of course in this form it’s not even actually Vit C to begin with. The bulk of the rest of the world’s ascorbic acid is manufactured by large pharmaceutical companies in China.
     So what does this tell us? Well, one thing it tells us is that if you look at the label on a bottle of “Vit C supplement” and it says only ascorbic acid, don’t buy it. Only buy one from the few that claim to be a Vit C complex derived from natural food sources, such as rosehip, or citrus or one of the top 15 natural Vit C sources shown in the accompanying table. Natural Vit C, as well as including ascorbic acid, will have bioflavanoids and rutin and other enzymes in a naturally occurring complex structure created by nature to sustain us. Looking at a typical multi vitamin label today we see such ingredients as: Acetate, Palmitate, Thiamine mononitrate, Thiamine hydrochroide, Thiamine Chloride, Irradiated ergosterol or Claciferol, dl-alpha tocopherol, Menadione, Beta Carotene and Retinoic acid. How many of these are likely to be true vitamins. None?. Most are chemical derivatives concocted in a pharmaceutical laboratory. Drug company products!
     Currently the number one food containing Vit C naturally is the Kakadu Plum found in Australia. Refer to the chart which shows Vit C contents of various foods. Regrettably few of these are likely to be on the shelf at your local produkti. However on the positive side all fruit and vegetables contain some levels of Vit C, but some of the highest Vit C levels are found in the foods in the chart. Others worthy of mention include: brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, most other green leafy vegetables, chillies, potato, tomato, watercress, goji berries (higher Vit C in berries from Tibet), black and red currants, strawberries, loganberry, persimmon, papaya, lychee and all citrus fruit (yes including oranges, although the Kakadu Plum may have 50x as much Vit C as a normal orange). But another word of caution. Do not expect the colourful fruits and vegetables in today’s supermarket to have naturally high concentrations of needed vitamins and minerals, including Vit C. Foods which will have much higher vital vitamins and minerals are most organically grown foods.
     So rather than relying on a magic pill to make us healthy, we should be looking to old fashioned sensible eating habits, sourcing organic food where practical. Less processed foods and more fresh organic fruit and vegetables. However if we do seek to support our diet with supplements then a good country to try to source natural supplements from is Russia. Here the chemist shop is called ‘Apteka’ and in these Russian shops you will normally find many vitamin supplements made from natural fruits, berries, herbs and whole foods. Russia’s abiding love of natural foods and remedies throughout its years of separation from the west to the present time is to be commended.
     Another quote from Dr O’Shea: “As a dead, purified chemical introduced into the body, the synthetic supplement further stresses the immune system, the liver and the kidneys all have to try to break down this chemical and remove it from the body. It would be bad enough if they were harmless, but synthetic vitamins have a net negative effect”.

     Caveat Emptor: As individuals we can change the world. One way is to take care what we buy and what we willingly eat or drink. Find out first where anything was made and from where its components were sourced. Then seek natural products from nature’s ‘laboratory’. Nature is our best vitamin and supplement manufacturer.