The Vitamin Code by Massoud Arvanaghi and Mike Yorkey

The VITAMIN CODE The Breakthrough Discovery That Will Change The Way You Take Vitamins Forever

The Vitamin Code tells the story behind the Jordan Rubin's Garden of Life raw vitamins. The book is written in three sections giving the reader an understanding of why vitamins are needed, the story behind the development of these vitamins, and an analysis of the vitamins on the market today. Jordan Rubin has been endorsed in the past by the Weston Price Foundation, so I am inclined to believe that he is selling a legitimate product. I do not take nutritional supplements myself: I have other areas of my diet to work on first. However, I learned a lot about nutritional supplementation from this book. In any case, I like Garden of Life's method of trying to sell their product by educating the consumer.

Part I: The learning curve

The medical community has consistently denigrated nutritional supplements but is slowly being forced to change. Today even the Journal of the American Medical Association recommends taking nutritional supplements. The history of vitamins begins in 1747 with James Lind discovering a cure for scurvy and continues with Eijkman discovering a cure for Beriberi in 1886. Both cures involved nutritional supplementation although not using synthetic vitamins. Vitamins were finally officially discovered by Funk in 1912 and synthetic Vitamin C was first produced by Szent-Gyorgyi in 1931.

There are two categories of vitamins: fat soluble and water soluble. Fat soluble vitamins include A, D, E, and K. Excess levels of these vitamins can be stored in fat for future use, and these vitamin levels will be depleted by a low fat diet. The B series of vitamins are the primary water soluble vitamins. The body flushes out excess levels so they cannot be stored and must be replenished regularly.

Part II: Cracking the code

The second part of the book tells the story of Endre Szalay who started the Grow Company which produces the vitamins sold by Garden of Life. Szalay is a Hungarian pharmacist who avoided serving in the Second World War because he is part deaf. His freedom spared, he managed to survive the warfare and rampaging armies which rampaged back and forth across his country during the war. He became a successful pharmacist after the war but was worried about being denounced to the communists, so he escaped to the United States.

Once in the US, Szalay's genius demonstrated itself. He began at the very bottom level of the pharmacy profession and but he rose up the ladder to become the Vice President of three different pharmaceutical companies. Giving up the lucrative positions, he retired and invested his own money to follow his passion and create the Grow Company which grows vitamins inside of living organisms--yeasts. These vitamins contain all the necessary factors for the body to use them because they are constructed by a living organism. The Grow Company does not sell directly to customers it only sells to other companies, so Jordan Rubin approached Szalay to begin making nutritional supplements. The rest is history.

Part III: What the vitamin code means

There are five different levels of vitamins according to the authors of this book. From worst to best they are

1. Isolated Vitamins and Minerals: These are the cheapest and most common form. They often contain lots of sweeteners and the body has a difficult time absorbing them.
   
2. Isolated Vitamins and Minerals with Food Powder: These are the same synthetic vitamins as before but they contain some food powders which make them slightly easier for the body to assimilate.
   
3. Food Concentrates: These are vitamins extracted from healthy foods such as grasses. They were popular during the 1930s but were driven from the market by the cheaper isolated vitamins and minerals.
   
4. Fermented Vitamins and Minerals: To create these vitamins a food concentrate is mixed with a pro-biotic such as friendly yeasts. The fermentation makes the food concentrates easier to absorb.
5. Raw Food Created Vitamins: These vitamins are grown inside of yeast using the Grow Company's process which is described in more detail in the second part of the book. They are kept at low temperature to avoid denaturing from heat.