What exact fruits/vegetables in what exact quantities are necessary to replace a daCentrum vitamin?

Basically, instead of taking Centrum once a day, I would like to eat specific amounts of specific fruits and vegetables such that I get the same nutrition and then I can throw away the Centrum vitamins. Also, I was hoping the volume of consumed plants could be as low as possible.

The hope is that I will get the side effect of non-vitamin benefits (like antioxidants or whatever) along with whatever I’m getting from the centrum vitamins.

Google turns up nothing.

“daCentrum” = “daily Centrum”.

There’s no one answer to this one. Fruits and vegetables all have different amounts of different nutrients. If you hated spinach you could substitute broccoli, for example. In addition, meats (including fish, poultry, dairy etc.) have a lot of the vitamins that you’re looking for.

You might try this DRI Calculator for Healthcare Professionals | National Agricultural Library Start by entering all the foods you want to eat - you might be surprised what’s in meats and starches. Add up each component and compare to the Centrum numbers. See what’s missing and enter in some vegetables to fill in the gaps.

When I was looking at my food intake, I did some looking into this.

Bascially I found once you start to go below 1400 calories a day, it’d be very difficult (though not impossible to get the needed vitamins and minerals. You’d need to plan each bite very careful. And once you go below 1200 calories even then it’s going to be nearly impossible to do without a supplement.

There are so many variables here it’s hard to say exactly, but you need to concentrate on foods that are heavy in more than one vitamin. For instance, oranges are good in Vitamin C. But an orange is basically sugar with some vitamin C thrown in. So you would need to find a food high in vitamin C and some other vitamin you need.

In otherwords if you eat one food, that is high in one vitamin each, then you’re gonna have to eat a lot. This is the reason why those “Total Cereal” commercials work. :slight_smile:

So I would find out your daily needs or in the OP case, what’s exactly in a Centrum Vitamin and google the amounts and try to combine the veggies or other food to max out your vitamins while minimizing calories.

The answer to the OP is whale blubber, lots and lots of whale blubber.