A dietary supplement should supplement our best attempts at following a healthy diet rather then become an excuse to eat poorly. While good nutrition is important, it s not simply a matter of the individual nutrients that a supplement may contain. There s a great deal we don't know about food factors beyond vitamins and minerals. Fiber is one of those factors. Only now is its role in maintaining good health beginning to be understood.
Minerals are another important dietary factor.
It may be true that if you eat a highly processed diet, you could be missing some of the minerals your body needs. But scientists may not yet know enough about their benefits, risks or how much the body actually needs to establish an adequate supplement. For example, we currently don't know everything about the trace minerals, how much is needed. Minerals need to be taken in a specific ratio, because they compete with each other for carrier sites, and occasionally have opposing functions. If you eat a lot of one mineral, you decrease your body s ability to utilize another.