Question: Is whole food vitamin C superior to natural because it is part of a tyrosinase complex?
Short Answer: Vitamin C is nearly ubiquitously distributed in plant tissues, and is never bound to any enzyme as a structural complex. Vitamin C promotes absorption of iron from plant foods, inhibits copper absorption, and de-loads copper from ceruloplasmin, which may play a role in distributing copper to tissues. Vitamin C is not capable of destroying ceruloplasmin. These functions follow directly from vitamin C as an electron donor and there is no evidence whatsoever that whole food vitamin C behaves differently in these respects than synthetic vitamin C. However, daily needs in most contexts are 2-400 milligrams of vitamin C per day, which is below the dose shown to potentially cause problems with copper. Getting this from whole foods or whole food supplements is better than using synthetic vitamin C because it avoids GMO corn and Chinese synthetics and provides a host of other beneficial constituents alongside the vitamin C.
This episode was cut from the original Q&A session that you can find here.
DISCLAIMER: I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in performing and evaluating nutritional research. I am not a medical doctor and nothing herein is medical advice.
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