I was wondering if there is any downside to getting your vitamins mainly from multivitamins instead of fruit and vegetables. For example: is there any difference in getting vitamin C from a pill vs. an orange or a broccoli?
Dr. Eric Berg says you need to eat some 10 cups of vegetables a day. Well even vegetables have sugar and carbs which can increase your glucose and take you out of ketosis.
Theoretically, can’t I just eat mostly meat for fat and protein and just supplement the vitamins, minerals and fiber with multivitamin pills? That way you get practically zero carbs and your required glucose can be produced from protein.
I’m not saying veggies and fruits are unhealthy, but wouldn’t it be possible to do a more extreme keto diet if you just supplement the vitamins instead of consuming carbs and sugar to get them?
I dunno. I take some multivitamin supplements to cover the bases, since some days I eat more veggies and some days less. I do try to get in some healthy greens each day, though.
In my dad’s 1950’s wisdom he always said taking vitamins makes expensive pee. IDK how true it is but it made me laugh.
PaulL
(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?)
#6
My belief is that you are indeed on the right track, but I would go even further.
There was a famous year-long experiment done in 1927, on two Arctic explorers, to prove their claim that it was possible to live only on meat, as they asserted the Inuit did. Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Karsten Andersen agreed to be kept under observation for a year as the lived on a fat-rich, meat-only diet. They were fine, and the researchers considered the experiment a failure, because the men did not develop scurvy or any other vitamin or mineral deficiency.
The point is that the body behaves differently on a ketogenic diet, and micro-nutrients that are necessary on a high-carbohydrate diet are of little concern on a ketogenic diet. Take vitamin C, for example: We now know that β-hydroxybutyrate, in addition to its other benefits, acts as a hormone to turn on the body’s built-in defenses against oxidative stress, making vitamin C far less necessary, if it is even needed at all. I suspect that we are going to find out similar things about other minerals and supplements.
There is, however, at least one mineral we need more of, on a ketogenic diet, and that is sodium. We know that a high amount of carbohydrate in the diet inhibits the kidneys from excreting sodium to some extent, and that when we stop consuming carbohydrate in such a quantity, they return to excreting it at their normal, higher rate. We also know from recent research that our current dietary recommendation for sodium intake is far too low, especially in the U.S., and that people are healthiest when they get 5 grams of sodium, or 12.5 grams of table salt, a day. (This is partly why the traditional Maasai diet involved drinking the blood of their cattle; it was a source of salt.)
He’s not that far off I’m leaning more toward his opinion
I add a daily multivitamin, vitamin b complex, omega 3 and electrolytes…
I’m 7 months in, i’m histamine intolerant (my body’s still recoving from all those years of punishment) and I dont want to feel like i’m missing something…
I always added b-complex once fall came around, just to get my system a bit more “flu-ready”, so I do a 3-month round of that.
How much is actually absorbed…everyone’s guess is as good as mine One of my professors said that a vitamin is a vitamin, even if it came from an orange or an effervescent tablet. Some say they aren’t the same, some say that vitamins from food are not actually as available due to all those membranes standing in the way, etc…
Aaaannnddd, what always keeps me suspect-we never know exactly what and how much is in those tablets-if it’s marketed as a “dietary supplement”, it doesnt need to go through vigorous testing to prove the dosage claims…we had a few “scandals” in my country
N=1: Shortly after going keto, I ran out of my very expensive whole food vitamin supplement(one I would go back to in a heart beat if I thought I needed one) and I didn’t replace. I also went pretty close to zero carb during parts of my journey thus far. I had no vitamins, no fruit and very few veggies for six months before getting labs. ALL of my vitamin and mineral levels were straight down the middle of normal! Would agree that salt and water are a must but the rest? New wisdom is: the body knows what to do! (I would argue your statement that fruit is not unhealthy. Look into fructose.)
I tried to do things the Dr Berg way, like so many others, but I genuinely physically could not eat that much veg so I gave up trying and carried on doing what had been working for me. No doubt that’s the point when many others decide to buy his products.
The thing with supplements is they’re lab created. When you think you’re getting vitamin C in supplement form you’re not getting the full thing. So it’s always better to get it from food but that’s not feasible for everyone.
You may not need to get as crazy as some people might think. But there is the possibility that you could need something. I kinda think a lot has to do with exactly what you’re eating and the quality of it. The range of diets that fall into the category of “keto” is quite wide, all the way from vegan to carnivore.
I kinda like this video where Dr. Berry talks about supplements. A good diet will get you most of them anyway but he points out a few that he thinks are important. Some might not agree and that’s OK. It’s just one opinion.
It’s always better to get your minerals and vitamins via natural way. I think thats even the purpose of a healthy keto diet, kind of going back to the roots.
Of course there is always an exception if supplements are indispensible.
mostly! I wouldn’t trust that man as far as I can throw him, he genuinely talks in riddles… I reckon I could probably throw him a good few feet though.
I’m leaning more toward his opinion 
