Bluebonnet Nutritions

Food supplements are concentrated sources of nutrients or nutritious foods that have a specific physiological effect on the body. It has been mentioned that the American diet has increasingly become energy-rich but nutrient-poor; meaning basically that the foods eaten on a daily basis are not much more than empty calories. The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that consumers replace some foods in their diets with more nutrient-dense options to help improve the nutrient-to-energy ratio.* The terms energy-dense and nutrient-poor are commonly used to characterize foods perceived as unhealthy and to distinguish them from options that are more nutritious. Negative terms, such as junk foods or empty calories, are commonly used in antithesis to such descriptors as healthful or part of a complete, nutritious diet.

However, a review of the literature shows that the concept of a nutritious food is not based on any consistent standards or criteria. In many cases, healthful foods are defined by the absence of problematic ingredients (fat, cholesterol, sugar and sodium) rather than by the presence of any beneficial nutrients they might contain, such as vitamins, minerals, green foods, high ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) antioxidants, enzymes and healthful bacterium. Given the current dietary trends, eating nutrient-dense foods is an approach that can be considered a valuable tool for nutrition education and dietary guidance. By providing nutrient-dense options in the form of food supplements, seniors who have dentures, individuals recovering from trauma/surgery or even teenagers who are going through a growth spurt can obtain ideal nutrition even if the diet is less than optimal. Generally, food supplements are in specified potencies contained in a variety of dosage forms (powder, tablet, caplet, softgel or vegetable capsule).

Soy products, a subset of food supplements, have played an important role in the traditional diet of numerous cultures throughout the world for many centuries. Extracted from soybeans, soy provides vitamins, minerals and high-quality protein and is relatively low in fat, which makes soy an excellent and complete source of protein for human consumption. Soy products, such as lecithin, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylethanolamine, are also an excellent source of phospholipids, which are a major constituent of cell membranes and are important for the maintenance and repair of cellular structures. Phospholipids increase the communication between cells in the body by acting as natural emulsifiers (compounds that help keep fats suspended in a liquid environment), thereby, enhancing the cells' ability to communicate within the liquid environments of the blood and other cellular fluids.