Engineered vs created
Vitamins are synergistic with food and are meant to be taken as part of your food intake. An adequate intake of healthy oils, such as those contained in Risotriene, is necessary for the proper assimilation of oil-soluble vitamins.
Foods contain many nutrients and cofactors which haven't been discovered or named yet. Thus scientists haven't discovered how to synthesize them. New nutrients are still being discovered, and it is more likely than not that there are some yet to be found. For example, Risotriene was listed as having 70 antioxidants just last year, and in one year four more have been discovered in the product. As we get smarter, Risotriene gets better. A supplement based on only known nutrients is bound to have something missing, no matter how complete it is according to existing knowledge.
In 1996, it was discovered that glyconutrients help communication between cells, and help other nutrients work. Risotriene is full of glyconutrients naturally; but if we were making a synthetic mix of nutrients, we would not have known to put glyconutrients in prior to 1996.
Are you really what you eat?
So foods aren't adequate and supplements aren't adequate. There is yet a third complicating factor - you are not what you eat, not entirely.
A frog in a blender can't jump
If you put a frog in a blender, is it still a frog? It may have the same chemical assay as a frog, but it doesn't jump. And there is no way science can turn it back into a frog. Similarly, if you take bits and pieces of nutrients from food and combine them, the result is not necessarily food as your body understands it. A frog in a blender doesn't have life. Packaged supplements also don't have life.
Supplement nutrients are often synthesized, nor not directly from natural sources. One question that often comes up is: Are synthetic vitamins identical to natural vitamins from food? The answer is: yes and no. With synthetic vitamins, the molecular structure of the vitamin is the same as that of the natural vitamin as far as science knows today, but that isn't the whole story. Natural vitamins from food sources contain cofactors without which the vitamin does not work as it should. For example, a molecule of synthetic ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is identical to a molecule of natural ascorbic acid. However, the natural ascorbic acid has cofactors called bioflavonoids.
Additionally, using the example of vitamin C: If you take pure ascorbic acid, especially in large doses, it may deplete the body of essential minerals, especially copper. Food which naturally contains vitamin C usually contains some copper to offset this.
The point here is that taking isolated vitamins is not the same as using a complete, nutritious whole food product.
