What EVIDENCE is there that vegetables > vitamin pills?

[Measure_for_Measure]

Does the OP dislike fruit? If not, I would hypothesize that fruit could provide sufficient fiber and vitamins, though a daily supplement wouldn’t be a bad idea.
The other considerations would be whether the OP had a healthy BMI or had an excessive intake of salt, given his age. One might check for obvious problems before moving on to subtle ones.

[constanze]

@Uncertain

This is quite mistaken. No chemist would say that optical isomers are “exactly the same”.

You must have met different chemists than me, then. In purely chemical contexts, chemists only give the chemical formula, not the light-orientation or other properties, because in purely chemical contexts, it usually doesn’t matter, only in biological contexts.

There are processes for separating them. We understand perfectly well why certain laboratory reactions produce equal mixtures the the two enantiomers (the relevant laws of physics being symmetric under mirror reflection). We understand perfectly well how it is that living things systems produce just one optical isomer (enzymes and raw materials are, after all, chiral themselves).

That’s not what I would call an explanation - stuff is oriented one way because it starts out that way, okay, but why is one variant so dominant in nature?

And we understand why the other enantiomer would usually not be useful (see last point).

Well, the pharma company producing Contergan/ Thalidomid didn’t know it, back in the 60s, which is still kind of recent to me. Neither the company nor the FDA, in different countries, realized to watch for the light-orientation, or knew that this could play any role; it took some time to figure out, after it was pulled from the market, what had happened.

Therefore, I used this case as analogy for how with the current knowledge of that time, where chirality was not important in chemical context, nevertheless it was important for humans; likewise, properties like Biolumenecy might be important for the human body, though science is just starting to research this.

[Uncertain]

@constanze

You must have met different chemists than me, then.

Like the people who taught my organic chemistry classes? The ones who taught me about enantiomers, diasteriomers, achiral compounds, and racemic mixtures, and about retention or inversion of stereocenters by various reactions? They would never in a million years say that optical isomers are “exactly the same”.

In purely chemical contexts, chemists only give the chemical formula, not the light-orientation or other properties, because in purely chemical contexts, it usually doesn’t matter, only in biological contexts.

I’m not sure what meaning of “chemical formula” you have in mind. The structure of an organic compound includes its stereochemistry.

Referring to stereochemistry as “light-orientation” misses what’s important. Enantiomers are mirror images of each other. Like right-handed screws and left-handed screws, they’re not “exactly the same”.

That’s not what I would call an explanation - stuff is oriented one way because it starts out that way, okay, but why is one variant so dominant in nature?

My one sentence may not satisfy you, especially if you don’t know much about biochemistry, but we completely understand this.

Well, the pharma company producing Contergan/ Thalidomid didn’t know it, back in the 60s, which is still kind of recent to me. Neither the company nor the FDA, in different countries, realized to watch for the light-orientation, or knew that this could play any role; it took some time to figure out, after it was pulled from the market, what had happened.

That’s absolutely not what happened. People knew well that stereochemistry matters. Unfortunately they didn’t know that a particular compound had terrible effects.

Therefore, I used this case as analogy for how with the current knowledge of that time, where chirality was not important in chemical context, nevertheless it was important for humans; likewise, properties like Biolumenecy might be important for the human body, though science is just starting to research this.

It’s not an analogy for anything. You seem anxious to adopt an almost vitalistic view and arrive at a “natural is better” conclusion. You seek to dismiss arguments about physically identical things being equivalent by claiming that there might be unknown ways in which they are not identical. But this is not based on an understanding of the science.

“Biolumenecy”?