With modern farming techniques, a large proportion of the many minerals and vitamins that were previously obtainable from food has disappeared. To function properly you may need to supplement your diet.

Today's adults are benefiting from historic farming techniques and the health gained in their youth. The future likely difficulties are particularly severe for young people. The problem is aggravated by changes in diet: for generations people at least in India maintained a broadly constant and nutritious diet but in the course of the last ten or twenty years radical changes have been made. Partly this is the result of the media and partly the result of an assortment of dietary fads from nutritionists.

One component of a general strategy to regain your supply of required minerals and vitamins is to buy organic products. This will be partly successful although the land on which organic food is grown or taken will have been polluted to a greater or lesser extent over the last thirty years. Another component is to revisit your overall diet and consider amongst other things what will have changed from the diet that your parents had (clearly this will only work if they had a healthy diet).

The chances are that even with this two-pronged strategy the food you eat will still lack vital minerals and vitamins and you need to take these as supplements. The main difficulty here is in knowing what to take: there is no reliable guide that I have come across.

For someone who is in pursuit of a spiritual or religious life, it is best to switch away from a food diet and instead have milk and yoghurt, supplemented by sugar. This is healthy, and there is no need for any supplements.