There are all kinds of trendy supplements on the market, but sometimes the most basic nutrients—like good old natural vitamin C—turn out to be the wisest choices for wellness support.

 Why Supplement With Vitamin C?

Since the human body can’t produce this essential vitamin on its own, natural vitamin C is one of the most important nutrients you can consume to maintain glowing health.

It’s naturally found in many brightly colored fruits and vegetables like bell peppers, citrus fruits, acerola cherries, broccoli, and cauliflower, but you’d have to eat three to four servings of vitamin C rich foods each day to meet the recommended daily requirement. Because it can be challenging to get all the vitamin C you need from diet alone, a high quality supplement helps ensure that your body receives all the vitamin C it’s craving. 

Whole Food vs. Synthetic Supplements

When choosing a vitamin C supplement, it’s important to remember that this vitamin  never occurs as an isolate in nature—you’ll only find it in foods that also contain additional complementary nutrients. That’s why taking isolated single nutrients, as you might find in a vitamin C tablet, is not a natural or optimal way to feed your body. 

In addition to avoiding isolate supplements, it’s also a good idea to steer clear of vitamins that aren’t made by nature. Unfortunately, the most common form of vitamin C found in supplements  is ascorbic acid, which is a laboratory-made synthetic—often sourced from genetically modified corn. Although ascorbic acid chemically similar to vitamin C, it’s not truly identical. It’s missing some of the vital elements that make natural vitamin C so beneficial—such as rutin, bioflavonoids, factor K, factor J, factor P, and ascorbinogen. Ascorbic acid may also reduce copper levels and upset the balance of your delicate microbiome. To compound these issues, synthetic sources of vitamin C may be highly acidic, which could make it more difficult for your body to absorb nutrients from the healthy foods you eat. 

It’s always best to choose pure, clean supplements sourced from whole foods that the body can recognize (often referred to as “bioavailable” sources). Natural foods contain everything your body needs to digest, absorb, and use the goodness they offer—with vitamins and minerals occurring  in combinations that work synergistically. Sari Foods Natural Vitamin C from Organic Acerola Cherries is a completely natural, whole food supplement containing 833% of your required daily recommended requirement in just one serving. And it packs quite a punch; there is as much vitamin C in one acerola cherry as in 65 oranges!

Make the Most of Your Vitamin C

Getting enough vitamin C can be trickier than it looks. For starters, vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin, which means whatever your body doesn’t make use of immediately doesn’t remain in your body for future needs.  Since we can't store it, we need to make sure we consume it regularly. There are also several factors that can affect the availability of the vitamin C we take into our bodies, including stress and environmental factors like cigarette smoke, pollution, and exposure to chemicals.

Finally, vitamin C degrades with time, temperature, and tampering (the 3 T's to avoid!) so highly processed foods—and even whole foods that aren’t at the peak of freshness—may not be delivering the vitamin C you were counting on. 

One of the simplest ways to counter these factors is to add our Organic Acerola Cherry Powder to your water bottle. This whole food supplement is also really easy to include in your favorite smoothies and recipes. If you’re not sure where to start, you’ll find lots of great tips in our Sari Life blog. It’s also helpful to avoid processed foods and tobacco use, eat lots of fresh, locally grown vitamin C rich foods throughout the day, and make time for some type of regular relaxation or mindfulness practice like meditation or yoga to keep stress at manageable levels. All of these easy lifestyle hacks should help keep your vitamin C levels right where they belong, to keep the healthy zing in your life for many years to come.

Peace, love, newfound energy, and lovely skin from the Sari Foods family!