People get more from vitamin E from eating enriched foods than from capsule supplements, new research shows.
Investigators found that after eating a bowl of vitamin E-fortified cereal, people absorbed around 26-times more vitamin E than they got from taking a capsule that contained the same amount of the vitamin.
Moreover, even when the cereal contained less than one tenth the amount of vitamin E as the supplement, blood levels of vitamin E were still higher after eating the cereal than after taking the supplement.
“That’s the surprise: the 30 IU in the cereal raised blood levels 5 times better than the 400 IU pill,” study author Dr. Maret G. Traber of Oregon State University in Corvallis told Reuters Health.
Foods that are rich in vitamin E include:
– dark leafy vegetables,
– almonds and vegetable oils, such as olive, canola and sunflower seed oils
Vitamin E, an antioxidant, has been linked to a number of health benefits, including reducing the risk of cancer and preventing arteries from becoming clogged.
– American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.