Natural Or Synthetic Vitamins?
A clerk in a health food store tells you that “natural” vitamin C extracts from rose hips are better than synthetic tablets of the vitamin. Given what you know about the structure of organic compounds, what would be your response? How would you design an experiment to test whether a natural and synthetic version of a vitamin differ?
October 02 2009 12:01 pm | Natural health care
August 29th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
It’s best to get your vitamins through food, not pills.
August 29th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Natural vitamin C is ascorbic acid extracted from plants (and is much more expensive than artificially manufactured vitamin C.) Artificial C is also ascorbic acid–the exact same chemical make-up. The only difference is price, so of course the person working at the health food store will tell you that natural is better.