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Health & Medical: Nutrition
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Making a Case for Vitamin C (feature)
To Supplement or Not to Supplement
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Publication Date: Summer 2001
The USDA recommends eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. But not all veggies are created equal. Although more Americans than ever are getting their daily five, the foods they choose are leaving them short on certain nutrients, especially vitamin C.
ASU nutrition researchers Jeffrey Hampl and Carol Johnston, and former ASU graduate student Christopher Taylor, have analyzed the types of fruits and vegetables most Americans eat. The most popular, in order of highest consumption, are: lettuce, tomatoes, bananas, orange juice, apples, onions, carrots, and cucumbers.
“If you look at the most commonly consumed vegetables, they’re what’s found on a Big Mac,” Johnston says. “People are consuming fruits and vegetables as condiments.”
Potatoes didn’t make the list, but Hampl notes that french fries were not included in the count. If they were, potatoes probably would have appeared near the top of the list.
With the exception of orange juice, these foods are low in vitamin C as well as folate, one of the B vitamins. Johnston says that only 40 percent of Americans drink orange juice.
What foods offer a bigger dose of C? The following are some of the most vitamin C-rich foods. Remember, the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance for vitamin C is 75 mg per day for women and 90 mg per day for men. Smokers should aim a little higher, between 110-125 mg per day.
The best food source of vitamin C in the world is the half ripe fruit of the camu camu, a shrubby tree found in the Amazon rainforest. It provides 2,700 mg of C per 100 grams of fruit! —Diane Boudreau