The industrialization of farming has resulted in agriculture that contains unsafe levels of pesticides and heavy metals. At the same time, we’re seeing the nutrient levels of our foods declining as farmland soil becomes depleted after centuries unsustainable farming practices.  For the sake of efficiency and profits, the big food companies have slowly and quietly narrowed down the number of ingredients in our food to the point where nearly 75% of the calories we consume in America come from just six major crops - rice, soy, potatoes, sugar, wheat, and corn.  Not exactly models of nutritional excellence.  But for the food companies being able to use genetic modification to grow these six ingredients fast and cheap and then use them to create hundreds of different products is the secret to big profits.

In an attempt offset the negative effects of industrial food production, people have turned to vitamin supplements. The problem is that these products only typically only contain a few synthetic forms of a few dozen key nutrients.  They do not contain the thousands ofphytonutrients that exist in fresh fruits and vegetables.  Science has only begun to discover and study these nutrients over the last few decades.  Higher quality vitamin supplements made from organic vitamins, whole food vitamins, or natural plant-based vitamins from food sources are a step in the right direction, but even these are synthesized in mass-production labs and completely ignore the natural relationship of nutrients (vitamins, minerals, and the thousands of known phytochemicals) that have been curated by nature for millions of years.