In my last nutrition article, I mentioned how many modern foods degrade human health. And while some modern foods are outright harmful, there’s also another subset of low-quality ingredients whose effects aren’t as obvious. These are what I’ll call “nutritionless” foods.
Due to the extreme processing that grain goes through nowadays, the product at the end has been burnt and bleached so terribly that most of the nutrients are gone. Because companies can’t get away with selling flour that doesn’t have any nutritional content, they mix in synthetic vitamins, producing “enriched” wheat flour.
The question is, are synthetic vitamins a suitable replacement for real vitamins? While there is some evidence that certain synthetic vitamins are toxic (such as synthetic vitamin A), many of them are bad for two reasons: they are unbalanced with other vitamins, and/or they cannot be absorbed.
Vitamin Imbalances
To be absorbed properly, certain vitamins and minerals need other nutrients to complete the process. For example, there’s a certain ratio between calcium and phosphorus, Vitamin A and Vitamin D, and Omega 3 and 6. Most of the time, foods like enriched flour do not have the right ratios.
These imbalances can cause vitamin deficiencies. Even if someone is eating enough Vitamin A, if they’re not getting enough Vitamin D, they could still get a Vitamin A deficiency.
The other problem is that many synthetic vitamins are not chemically the same as natural vitamins. Because of this, they often can’t be used by the body. So, if you are depending on fake vitamins for your health, you will also eventually become deficient.
Many synthetic vitamins sometimes won’t outright degrade health, but they also don’t contribute to health. That’s why they should often be avoided. If you eat too much of nutritionally empty foods, you will become unhealthy.
So as you can see, this is an instance where instead of outright damage from a substance causing illness, someone can become unhealthy by eating something that is nutritionally empty.

Modified from Alsosaid1987’s images, CC BY-SA 4.0
Thoughts
I said in my last article, “The highest quality ingredients are those that contribute the most to human health.” And while many synthetic vitamins don’t outright degrade health, they certainly don’t contribute much to it, especially when they are imbalanced with other vitamins. Eventually, a diet consisting of large amounts of foods containing synthetic vitamins can lead to nutrient deficiencies.