You’re thinking about taking collagen supplements. Are they a waste of money?

Do you feel like you’re being bombarded with ads for improving how how you look?

Natashais wide eyes explains

‘I can be minding my own business, looking on different social media sites and up pops an ad for slimming pants and now increasingly collagen supplements. I understand it’s based on the algorithms that know that I research nutrition and supplements for a living (but why the slimming pants?!)

Supplements remain controversial. Many people (especially pharmaceutically trained doctors) believe them be the cause of expensive urine with very little benefit.

On this I disagree. Having spent almost a decade researching nutrition and understanding how our bodies use vitamins and minerals and seeing the harm that being deficient in them can do, it is clear that we cannot get our daily essential vitamin intake from food alone.

But not all supplements are created equal. The only way our bodies can absorb supplements is if they recognise them as food. That’s why it is best to take supplements with food, but the supplements themselves should also have added ingredients to make them bioavailable (easy to absorb).

The best way to increase collagen in the body is to promote its production.

We definitely need optimum collagen levels; it is present in every part of the body in various forms. The advertising of supplements focuses mostly on the skin and of course how we look as we get older and people buy them because they want a magic bullet without having to alter their lifestyle’.

Every year our bodies lose an average of 1% collagen after age approx. 25 and so the argument goes that we need to take supplements to counteract this affect.

But collagen is one substance we can still get from food. And the great news is that it is cheaper and tastier and more efficient than scarfing down supplements.

The internet is rife with arguments for and against animal or plant-based supplements.

Plants do contain vitamins and minerals, but they also contain compounds that mean that our bodies can’t unlock or use them in the same way we can by eating meat and fish. To get the best from some plants we need to ferment them. And not all meat and fish sources are created equal either. A chicken breast cannot hold a candle nutritionally to a slow cooked oxtail for providing your body with the properties to make healthy skin. Making a bone broth after your Sunday roast produces a youth serum!

The modern diet is causing collagen depletion, amongst many other things, because we’ve forgotten the ancient art of getting what we need from food. We no longer utilise what nature provides. We literally throw away the most nutrient dense parts of our animal and plant foods.

Eating foods that cause oxidative stress means that your body is fighting a losing battle to balance your health. These are foods that are ultra-processed, nutrient deficient with refined grains, sugar and chemical additives.

If you are eating the standard British diet and then supplementing with collagen you are literally throwing money down the drain. The supplement cannot reverse the damage you are inflicting on your body.

To promote balance in every part of you the food has to be recognised as nutrients. Concentrating on good quality on-the-bone meat plus offal, fish, dairy, and seasonal vegetables will boost your essential vitamins and minerals and mean that your own collagen factory will fight the ageing process without you having to fork out.

In the meantime, Natasha is hiding the ads for collagen supplements on her social media streams. but shoes on the other hand….

Visit natashaiswideeyed.com for free recipes, articles, and videos to treat yourself to a bigger slice of life. Or for a personalised prescription for supplements and help with skin and bone issues email for an appointment to natasha@natashaiswideeyed.com