Health researchers are increasingly referring to a condition known as dysnutrition, or ‘Type B’ malnutrition.  This is not the sort of malnutrition associated with starving people in the developing countries.

Instead it is found in people in industrialised societies who have adequate calories (often more than adequate!), but an inadequate intake of many essential vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients.  

We don't eat enough!

It may be counter-intuitive, but the reason why so many of us are depleted in so many micronutrients is that we do not eat enough!

Throughout all our long history we have been much more physically active than we are today, thanks to modern cheap energy and labour-saving technologies.  The amount of food we eat has almost halved since the more physically active Victorians, and with less food come lower intakes of micronutrients.

We eat the wrong things!

We also eat less fruit, vegetables, pulses, oily fish, whole grains and fibre than our great-grandparents, but more refined carbohydrates, fast and convenience food, which often have lower nutrition content.

For example, the average person has an intake of vitamin D and selenium that is only about half of the RDA (Recommended Daily Amount). These are just two of the many micronutrients critical to the proper functioning of the immune system. Moreover, the RDA did not set out to define an optimum level of nutritional intake; it is only enough to prevent deficiency symptoms.

Most people have an intake of many micronutrients well below the level needed for adequate ‘baseline’ support of the immune system.

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