Numbers Game: Answer

One medium sweet potato offers 37 percent of the daily vitamin C requirement and 438 percent of the daily vitamin A requirement.

This very well exemplifies why I don't think everyone needs to be downing multivitamins every single day. Foods offer vitamins and minerals in plentiful amounts!

This single food (in its mere 105-calorie package which also packs 4 grams of fiber) contains not only the above mentioned nutrients, but also a fair share of manganese (28%), copper (16%), potassium (15%), vitamin B6 (9%), and magnesium (8%).

Part of the problem with the overly broad protein/fat/carbohydrate categorizing of foods so prevalent in the media is that nutrients get overlooked.

Ask a random person on the street to name three popular diets and they'll quickly spit them out. Then inquire if they can name 3 sources of vitamin C (other than oranges) and you'll probably be met with an "Ummm..." and an answer ending with a question mark, rather than a period.

It also doesn't help that multivitamin companies have convinced millions of people that they are either deficient in many nutrients or don't need to worry about them as long as they pop that pill.