We are told to eat oranges to get our vitamin C so we don't get colds (but we still get them all the time). We are told to eat carrots to get vitamin A for healthy eyes (but 75% of adults use some sort of vision correction). We obsess over our understanding of what each food contains thinking we can supply our body's needs better than nature does. The "Vitamin C" and "Vitamin A" stories have been marketed to us for so long, that instead of going through the hassle of eating oranges and carrots we think we are getting the nutrients our bodies need because the label on our multivitamin states: "More vitamin C than 20 oranges and more vitamin A than 50 carrots". While this might trick our minds, our bodies aren't fooled.
Our bodies crave foods in their whole form the way nature produces them. A single orange synergistically provides us with thousands of nutrients in the perfect ratios for our bodies to digest and absorb... and that is just one orange! If we were to stop focusing on individual nutrients and instead start eating oranges simply to get our oranges, might our bodies start returning to their natural state of health?