How to Tell Between Synthetic Vitamins & Organic
The difference between synthetic and organic vitamins is a hotly debated topic in the health and food industries. You don't need a few courses in chemistry and biology to tell one from the other. With a few easy steps, you can learn to distinguish between synthetic and organic off-hand.
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Instructions
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Synthetic vitamins may lack nutrients because they have been produced in an isolated form. Popular examples to illustrate this are Vitamins C and B. Hpakids.org explains that, for instance, one source for synthetic Vitamin B is coal tar. However, this is not an organic compound that would be consumed by humans in any circumstance. It has been identified to be more ineffective when compared to organically derived Vitamin B.
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Read the nutritional label. The easiest rule of thumb is to identify whether the source of the vitamin stated on the label is derived from an organic substance. This is rather easy because organic substances generally have common names, while synthetically derived sources will have descriptive names. For instance, organic sources of Vitamin A would be fish oils and lemon grass, while synthetic sources would be acetate and palmitate.
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Familiarize yourself by reading a few nutritional labels of your own at a local store. With a few tries, you'll begin to understand the visible variation between organic nomenclature and synthetic nomenclature. Additionally, you can use Nutriteam.com's How to Read Labels list for more examples.
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Don't settle for fractionated vitamins. Vitalhealthandfitness.com notes that a fractionated vitamin is an altered natural vitamin. This is another way of describing a synthetically produced vitamin that has been isolated, and which may not have all of the necessary components. For example, a nutritional label that lists Vitamin E as d-alpha tocopherol is only one portion of the vitamin. It simply will not be as effective as Vitamin E organically derived from wheat germ oil.
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Use polarized light to get a further visualization of the difference. Nutriteam.com explains that the light ray will bend to the right due to the substance's molecular rotation. The synthetic version will split the ray of light, because it is made out of half dextro-form (right-form) and half levo-form (left form), making the ray split into both directions.
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Tips & Warnings
Synthetic vitamins do not contain all of the co-factors, components and co-enzymes that contribute to the overall usefulness of a vitamin in its organic form.
