In my grandparents day, the word “organic” didn’t exist in their vocabulary. They had there own garden where they grew most of the fruits and vegetables that they included in their diet. They kept a few chickens to provide them with eggs and all the garden waste went on grandpa’s compost heap to rot down and be dug back into the soil. Everything grown was organic, nutrition supplements had never been heard of and the air was a lot cleaner then too, except in the industrial cities, or during the winter months when coal fires kept the homes warm.The world has changed a lot since then. Because of technology and increases in world populations, farming practices changed as well and new methods were employed to increase crop yields. Chemical fertilizers were spread on fields instead of manure, pest control chemicals were introduced and over the years the new ways of farming began to reveal their flaws.The food doesn’t taste as good as it once did, and even though today’s apple looks pretty on the outside, it lacks a lot of the nutrients and minerals that keep us healthy. This is true of most of the foods produced today, although there is a growing move to return to “organic” farming practices.You might ask your grandparents if they ever took nutrition supplements! I bet they didn’t because they didn’t need to. Their food was complete in itself, and the nutrition supplements world wasn’t yet born. Sadly, those days have long gone. Now you have to seek out “organic” food if you want the most nutrition at your dining table, and pay substantially more for it.So what does all this mean to you? It means that the food that you buy today, lacks the nutrition that the same food once had and in order to make good the deficiency, certain nutrition supplements are required. You could buy everything from an organic food store, but then your food bill could easily double or even triple. Check out your local supermarket to compare prices and you’ll see what I mean.How do you know if your lacking any minerals and vitamins? That’s a good question that’s not always solved by a quick visit to the doctor. Most GP’s have only a rudimentary understanding of nutrition because it encompasses a small part of their medical training. A Naturopath has probably delved into the subject in more detail and is probably better qualified to make a diagnosis. This is not something that the layperson is able to judge for themselves although most of us do, popping down a cocktail of nutrition supplements because we feel we might be short on something. It’s not dangerous, after all you don’t need a prescription,Unless your getting a regular balanced diet of organic foods, nutrition supplements are going to make up for the deficiencies. If you have the advantage of knowing what these deficiencies are, through professional testing, then you can make qualified choices of which nutrition supplements to take, otherwise your best route is to select a balanced chelated multi vitamin supplement. Balanced and chelated because most nutrients work together to provide better absorption and utilization in the body. If you follow the “I’ll give it a shot” school of medicine, you’re probably wasting your money.We’ve seen how the nutrition supplements industry was born from changes in farming practices. Food quality, from a nutritional perspective has decreased, hence the need to add nutrition supplements to our diet.