Makers Diet: Whole Food

You have heard me talk about whole foods, particularly concerning supplements. Why whole foods? Here is an excerpt from Extraordinary Health, Jordan Rubin’s new health magazine published monthly by Garden of Life, Inc.:



Photo credit


We all know that one of the key nutrients provided by an orange is vitamin C. The health benefits of vitamin C have been promoted for decades. Vitamin C is so important that hundreds of companies now manufacture vitamin C to their food products. That seems like a good thing. In fact it is a huge mistake.


An orange contains so much more than vitamin C. It contains hundreds of nutrients, minerals, and phyto-chemicals. These co-factors work synergistically with each other. Without them vitamin C is not nearly as effective. Vitamin C needs all of these other beneficial compounds in order to work as effectively as possible. When you isolate vitamin C from all of the other nutrients in an orange you severely limit its potency.


This is the basis for whole food nutrition. Food consumed in a state as near to nature as possible is far healthier than food that has been processed, isolated and fractionated into its individual nutrients.

Makers Diet: Probiotics

One of the keys behind the Makers Diet is that extraordinary health starts with the gut. An estimated 90% of illnesses emanate in the gut and 50-80% of our immune and nervous system is there. Jordan Rubin and other health experts state that the ratio of good bacterial flora (probiotics) in our gut to bad bacteria should be 80% to 20% but that this ratio is reversed for many of us.

Some ways to introduce the beneficial bacteria and re-establish the right ratio include eating foods high in probiotics, such as yogurt, kefir (like a thick, drinkable yogurt), sauerkraut, lacto-fermented foods, real apple cider vinegar, miso, and natto.

Photo credit



Another way is to supplement. I am a big fan of probiotic supplements. After I had Caitlin, I started to suspect that she had reflux. After a lot of research I found some enlightening news that suggested probiotics could help. I started taking them myself since I was nursing and debated about giving them directly to her. Her reflux symptoms were much better controlled. We had made a few other changes so I wasn’t really sure if the probiotics helped. When I ran out I stopped taking them and within 24 hours her symptoms flared again. Since then she and I have been taking them and have also experience less cold symptoms than Kai and Lee. Recently I started giving them to Kai, and yesterday Lee started taking “purple vitamins.”

My favorite and extensively researched brands are Garden of Life Primal Defense, Nature’s Plus Animal Parade Acidophikidz, and Udo’s Infant Probiotic. All include high cell counts of live bacteria and multiple strains. The first two products are shelf stable (do not have to be refrigerated). It’s hard to compare different brands because they all contain different bacteria, and almost every probiotic study uses different strains. However, I have seen personal benefits in my own self and my family with all of these products!

Makers Diet: Supplements

One of the drawbacks of the Makers Diet and GPRx books is that the Garden of Life supplements that are touted were developed by Jordan Rubin. Several people I know have been turned off from the MD for that reason. Anytime you see someone making money off making money (selling a book selling his products) it raises a red flag. It definitely made me question some of his information as well.
I did a lot of research comparing Garden of Life (GOL) products to other similar whole food supplements. I definitely think Jordan Rubin has made a lot of money (A LOT) from advertising his own products. However, I really do think they are some of the best products on the market.

GOL are leading whole food supplements sold in over 12,000 stores nationwide. They have made Entrepreneur Magazine and Inc. 500 lists of fastest growing privately held companies. Jordan Rubin has appeared on Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, FOX news, Inside Edition, and the Food Network. His story has been featured in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, People, Woman’s World, Women’s Health, and O (Oprah) Magazine. He has authored over 20 books.

No, fame does not mean that his supplements are gold, but his message has inspired thousands. It’s hard to ignore his supplements when his story is so well known. Now his supplements are starting to gain recognition as well. They are some of the best-selling on the market, and I challenge you do to your own review of them. I have decided that whole food supplements are the way to go, and Jordan Rubin goes into a lot of depth in his books explaining why he has developed them this way…in whole foods so that our bodies can actually absorb them. You cannot synthetically derive Vitamin C in a laboratory and dump it into your body and expect your body to utilize it the same way as when you extract it from whole foods along with other important co-nutrients that aid in its absorption and utilization.

My favorite products so far are Primal Defense (probiotic) and RAW ONE vitamins. I would like to look into CODmega or Oceans 3, RAW Vitamin D3, RAW calcium, and RAW Kombucha. Vitacost has a great comparative feature where you can see side-to-side profiles of different brands of whole food supplements by best seller, price, or reviews.

Photo credit