We can see so many products and new launches of supplements almost every week in the market either by advertisement or being the talk of the town. Beauty and health industry always come up with new ingredients or improve their product formulation to provide a new breakthrough in human health, wellness and appearances. Among all ingredients available, vitamin C has been well-known for generations and it plays so many roles for people across all walks of life in living healthily.
Just imagine yourself having fresh strawberries dipped in chocolate while gazing at the view of Cameron Highlands. Do you know strawberries contain vitamin C beside oranges that we generally know? One medium-sized orange can provide around 70 milligram of vitamin C, more than 90 % of vitamin C for the body’s daily needs or simply called Daily Value (DV). So how many strawberries do you need for vitamin C?
You will need 100 grams of strawberries to get the same amount of vitamin C of a medium-sized orange. You probably need to pay probably RM 10 or more for 100 grams of strawberries. Let’s just do some maths here. A day of these strawberries costs RM10, a week for RM 70 and a month around RM300. Just imagine paying for RM300 a month literally for vitamin C when you probably can save some few more bucks for other more important matters.
There is no actual guarantee that you may get all the vitamin C from the strawberries you bought in the supermarket. We know strawberries come from higher altitudes such as the highland. Although in Malaysia strawberries can be cultivated in certain places, most of the strawberries in the market shelves are still imported from other countries. The nutrition contents in the strawberry will slowly be altered and gradually decreased once it is picked. Imagine how long the journey would take for the strawberry to reach us. The longer the strawberry is shipped from the original country, the less nutrients it contains. The vitamin C content might decrease more than half of the initial content while it is still freshly picked if the temperature during the shipping process is not maintained well. By the time it reaches the market shelves, you probably would not get as much vitamin C as you think you might be getting and it is obviously a waste of money.
Why is getting enough vitamin C essential for us? Vitamin C helps boost our immune system and is less likely to get sick from infection. It also acts as an antioxidant that helps our body to fight any free radicals that harms our body system. Another benefit of this vitamin is it does help with wound healing by helping the skin to generate faster. One of the best remedies for ulcer in mouth aside from the usual gargling salt water and using oral treatment such as painkiller oral gel, try adding more vitamin C to help heal the ulcer.
In essence, the easiest way to have enough vitamin C for the day is by taking supplements. Undeniably, it is also hassle-free, super convenient and also the affordable way to make sure you get the most out of vitamin C. It can be rather tempting to chew more than one or two tablets of vitamin C but honestly it would not bring more additional benefits or any faster effect. What our body will do is just flush away those excessive vitamins through the kidney and into the urine. Remember to just take it accordingly as explained on the packaging or labels.
