Vitamins, vitamins, everywhere! And a letter for every one! They’re in the news for just about everything, from famous post-workout sardines to our acceptance of the baby-vication of vegetables, we are inundated with messages of how important vitamins are to a healthy human existence. Today, we’ll focus on our B’s. So, perhaps you already know all this, but sometimes repetition is a key element of truly learning something.
The B complex vitamins like riboflavin, thiamine, niacin, pantothenic acid, biotin, and folic acid are very important vitamins that play a big role in how our body functions. Our body’s metabolism relies on our vitamin B complex intake to work properly, it is also important in maintaining our immune and nervous systems, helps promote cellular growth and also keeps our body and organs healthy…and perhaps even help stave off cancer.
The problem is that sometimes we don’t get enough vitamin B into our system. While drinking vitamin supplements is a good option, it’s still healthier to get your vitamin B requirements from food.
Here are some things you can do to increase your intake of B complex vitamins:
Start eating green, leafy vegetables. Also add in asparagus, beets, cantaloupes and even brewer’s yeast to your diet. These foods are extremely rich in folic acid.
Whole grains (cereal germ, bran, whole wheat, brown rice, among others) are a great sources of many B complex vitamins, among them riboflavin and thiamine. You can also add millet and wheat germ to this mix.
If you want to add more niacin into your diet go and add these proteins to your menu repertoire – chicken and salmon. To add more niacin, try to find a recipe that also calls for potatoes and peanuts. These two root crops are very rich in niacin (also known as Vitamin B3).
Fermented soy products are also rich in vitamin B complex, an additional benefit of including fermented soy products in your diet is that it contains a lot of flavonoids – which are medically acknowledged as having great anti-cancer properties.
If you’re a diabetic or just want to cut down on your sugar intake, you can use a natural sweetener like stevia. Extracted from the leaves of a plant, stevia is rich in vitamins and minerals. In particular, it is rich in vitamin B12, which is hard to find in other food sources.
The takeaway: get your vitamins! Just get em! You could swim in a veritable pond of vegetable packed vitamin soup, or supplement with sardines. Either way, you’ve heard the message once again, and maybe this time you’ll add one more vitamin to your diet and be just that much healthier.
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