Minerals are inorganic nutrients that keep the body alive and healthy, and help to prevent and treat serious illness. Minerals and vitamins have a synergistic relationship both have to be present in the body before either can perform their function. Both vitamins and minerals are needed to make antioxidant enzymes that protect the body from free-radical damage. Scientists and nutritionists have long been aware that minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, and iron play an important role in keeping the bones, heart, skin, and red blood cells healthy. However, researchers have only recently begun to understand the potential health benefits of trace minerals such as chromium, selenium, copper, boron, etc. Minerals are not manufactured in the body.

Why do we need nutritional supplements or food supplements?
Since the 1920s, Western Governments have known that the majority of our food crops have been grown on mineral-depleted soils, which makes them not only more susceptible to plant diseases and insect attack, but also nutritionally fairly worthless.

In addition to this, animal feeds have changed from the natural foods they eat in the wild to highly processed, chemical laden concoctions that are designed to maximise growth rate, muscle mass and therefore value whilst minimising cost and the time it takes to turn them into a healthy profit. The result is meat that is dangerously high in chemicals and totally lacking in the natural nutritional elements that have kept us healthy for so long (until the 20th century!).

If this weren't bad enough, the modern reliance on pharmaceutical medicine to remove all symptoms of disease instantly has led us away from the traditional cures that sought to replace what was missing in the body. Indeed, many modern drugs, such as diuretics actually make us lose the very minerals we require for health at an increased rate.

As a consequence, virtually everyone in the Western World (many "primitive cultures" are much better nourished than we are) needs to supplement their diet to a greater or lesser extent. the most commonl types of nutritional supplements fall into the following categories:-

Types of Nutritional Supplements:
Antioxidants
Amino-acids
Carbohydrates
Essential fatty acids
Fats
Minerals
Plant extracts
Proteins
Trace elements
Vitamins