Eat Your Vitamins – by Mascha Davis, RDN

This book methodically discusses an assortment of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients; the “other nutrients” category including amino acids (branched chain and essential), prebiotics and probiotics, and triglycerides of various kinds.

It makes the argument that we are better off getting these things from nature than from supplements, and in the category of criticism, it doesn’t make that argument very well. The truth is that yes, bioavailability of many nutrients is higher from food, the author is a little selective in problem recognition—for example, criticizing supplements as sometimes being contaminated with heavy metals, right after recommending fish (famously a rich source of heavy metals, along with actual nutrients).

In a similar vein, she does not pay a lot of attention to downsides of certain foods, so for example we will see her recommending beef as a source of many nutrients—which it is! It’s just also a top risk factor for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and more. But, the author is a registered dietician-nutritionist and not a cardiologist, oncologist, epidemiologist, etc, and it shows.

On the other hand, a strength of this book is that it does elucidate what the various nutrients are and what they actually do, which conveys a level of understanding that very many people don’t otherwise have (your average person in the street is unlikely to be able to say what vitamin B3 actually does, for example).

The style is straightforward and clear, making this book an easy quick reference source, as well as being readable cover-to-cover if you so desire.

Bottom line: if you’d like to know more about the nutrients we humans need, this is a great book! Just watch out for the downsides of some foods though, as the author can be a bit overly generous in her recommendations.

Click here to check out Eat Your Vitamins, and indeed eat your vitamins!