In a perfect world, we would get all of the nutrients which our bodies need from the food which we eat.

But, our world is far from perfect. In particular, overpopulation threatens to strain the existing resources for nourishment. As a result, much of the soil has been depleted of nutrients and our seas over-fished. To compensate, many new practices have been instituted which, though perhaps well-intentioned, are creating a situation where we aren't able to get enough nutrients from the food we eat and in many cases, are actually harming our health.

Crops are dusted with pesticides, farmed fish are injected with antibiotics and beef commonly contains growth hormones in addition to antibiotics. The nourishing nutrients in our food supply have been replaced by dangerous substances which threaten our health and disrupt our natural endocrine equilibrium, throwing off our crucial internal hormonal balance.

So, in order to get the nutrients that are missing from our food, we need to add them to our diet in the form of supplements. There are many vitamins and minerals that the body needs but some seem to be involved in more functions than others. For example, magnesium has been found to play a key role in more than 300 different enzymatic reactions within all of the body's cells.

In The Body Perfect, I devote an entire chapter to discussing supplements with special emphasis on those that are most lacking in most people's diets.