Research shows that the entire diet, not just the vitamin, must be considered

This is fascinating research about the importance of looking at the big picture when researchers studying nutritional supplements, vitamins and minerals. In this study researchers were able to demonstrate that the absorbability of vitamin E was five times greater when this vitamin was supplemented with grains and cereals than when taken alone as a supplement. It's good research and it teaches all nutritional researchers and important lesson: that vitamins, minerals and nutritional supplements cannot be studied in isolation. The ability of a vitamin to enter the bloodstream and actually be useful to the person consuming the vitamin may depend greatly on what else that person is eating. This may also help explain the wide variability in nutritional supplementation studies that have been published over the last several decades. One thing this story leaves out is whether researchers are using the natural versus synthetic form of vitamin E in their studies, because most studies that use synthetic vitamin E tend to show the vitamin as having no positive effect on the body whatsoever. But studies using the natural form of vitamin E - the variety of vitamin E found in nuts seeds and other plants - tend to show very positive results. This leads to the rather obvious conclusion that if you represent a company who is interested in this crediting the value of nutritional supplements, such as a pharmaceutical company, it is very easy to create such results in a controlled study: simply use synthetic vitamin E, and make sure that study participants ingest the vitamin in isolation.