Published European research on intake · Read this before you change your eating pattern again
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"I eat healthily. So why am I this tired?"
Say that sentence out loud, because this is the sentence I hear most often.
You know your own version. Waking up tired after seven hours of sleep. That hour after lunch when your head goes tired. Reading the same paragraph twice. Being too tired at half past seven in the evening for the thing you had been looking forward to. Standing in the kitchen at four o'clock with the cupboard door open, not hungry, still looking for something. Legs like lead on a flat street. Cancelling on people and feeling rotten about it.
I am Jesse van der Velde. Not a guru and not a doctor. I study and share what published research says about how a body ages. I have been testing that on myself and with the people I guide for more than fourteen years.
The thought I hear many people say is "I must be doing something wrong". That is what we have to stop.
Because there is published work on what an ordinary European way of eating does and does not deliver, and almost nobody has read it.
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"Eating healthier" is not wrong advice. But it simply does not work any more.
You have already done it. Less sugar, more vegetables, fewer packaged meals, better bread, the bottle of water on your desk. The advice ran out before the tiredness did.
And every next piece of advice you come across is the same advice with a new name on it. Another list of what to add. Another list of what to cut.
That is why the question has lingered. As long as fatigue is approached as a discipline problem, the answer is always more discipline, and you have been paying that bill for years.
The published literature holds a different question, and there is a number attached to it.
In 2011, Blanca Roman Viñas and colleagues published an analysis of European intake data in Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism.¹
What was studied: how many people in Europe take in less of a nutrient than they need, for ten nutrients.
How: the data come from the European Nutrition and Health Report II. Only studies that used a validated food frequency questionnaire or a dietary history, or a food diary of at least 7 days, or that corrected for day-to-day variation, were included. Ten nutrients were examined: vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin B12, folic acid, calcium, iron, zinc, selenium, copper and iodine. The shortfalls were estimated with what is known as the EAR cut-point method, in which intake is set against the average requirement.
The findings.
Under 11 per cent had too low an intake of zinc, iron and vitamin B12 among older people.
Between 11 and 20 per cent for copper among adults and older people, for vitamin B12 among adults, and for vitamin C among older people.
Above 20 per cent for vitamin D, folic acid, calcium, selenium and iodine among adults and older people, and for vitamin C among adults.
Then what this study is and is not. They measured what went into people and set that beside the requirement for that nutrient.
Beneath this study lies a second published dataset.
In 2004, Donald Davis, Melvin Epp and Hugh Riordan published a comparison in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.²
What was studied: whether the reported amount of nutrients in garden crops changed between 1950 and 1999.
How: they put the published nutrient tables of the United States Department of Agriculture from 1950 and from 1999 side by side, for 13 nutrients and water, in 43 horticultural crops, largely vegetables. They corrected for differences in moisture content and, per crop and per nutrient, worked out the ratio between the 1999 value and the 1950 one.
The findings: as a group those 43 crops showed a statistically reliable decline for 6 of the 13 nutrients, namely protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and ascorbic acid, with median declines of 6 per cent for protein up to 38 per cent for riboflavin. For the other 7 there was no reliable change.
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Above 20 per cent. That is how many people in those European studies had too low an intake of vitamin D, folic acid, calcium, selenium and iodine among adults and older people, and of vitamin C among adults.¹ Intake, set beside a requirement. Not blood.
38 per cent. The largest median drop in the comparison between 1950 and 1999, for riboflavin, across the 43 crops as a group.² With the authors' own two caveats attached: individual crops were mostly indistinguishable from no change at all, and about 28 per cent of the ratios went up rather than down.
About 6 per cent, and nearer 20 per cent. In 2009 Lindsay Allen published a review article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on how often a low vitamin B12 status occurs. In large studies in the United States and the United Kingdom about 6 per cent of people aged 60 and over had a deficiency on the basis of the blood value, and nearer 20 per cent sat on the borderline. In older people that is mainly because the body releases the vitamin less well from food, partly through changes in the stomach lining.³
That number changes what a person does next. It tells you nothing about where you stand. What it does show is that intake and status are two different questions, and that almost everyone is talking about the first one.
You know your own version of this. Mine was a Tuesday, a decent lunch, a walk afterwards, and at ten past four my head still was not able to think properly.
For years I read that as evidence about my character. Not disciplined enough. Not fit enough. Try harder tomorrow.
Look at what was actually going on. A day that was fine and a body reporting something else. That difference is worth measuring, and I was busy passing judgement instead.
A judgement about your character gets you nowhere. Nothing constructive comes out of it. You cannot try harder to be a different person.
A week you have never measured does have a next step. You can put it next to the published research.
1. Cleaning up the food one level further.
How strictly you eat is of course up to you, and eating well is worth it in its own right.
But understand what another round of "I don't eat this any more" does and does not do. It changes what goes in. It says nothing about what your body does with it afterwards, and the review article above is the cleanest example of that: in older people the main reason for a low status lies in releasing it from the food, and not in the size of the portion.³
2. Keeping on adding whatever you read about last.
One thing this month, the next thing next month, whatever the article said. The European research shows why it works out so unevenly: ten nutrients, spread across three very different bands, with some of them in the lowest one.¹
You were not careless. You were aiming at a list that was never made for one person.
3. Putting the blame on the food.
The comparison between 1950 and 1999 is the study everyone here half quotes. Look at what it actually says: reliable declines for 6 of the 13 nutrients at group level, no reliable change for the other 7, individual crops mostly indistinguishable from no change, and around 28 per cent of the ratios going up.²
The honest reading is small and mixed, and it is mostly about plant varieties. That is no reason to eat worse. It is a reason to stop regarding the supermarket as the whole explanation.
4. Waiting for it to pass.
Give it a month, see whether the tiredness lifts on its own. But a week you have never measured stays unmeasured, and four o'clock in the afternoon simply comes back.
Four moves, one shared problem: none of them starts with what is actually going on with you.
The approaches failed here, and they were the sensible sounding kind. You have done nothing wrong. It can go differently.
This is the heart of it. There are two separate questions, and the public conversation only ever covers one.
Question one is what goes in. That is what all the advice is about.
Question two is what your own week reports back: when the tiredness comes, what it costs you, what it is tied to.
In 2018, Bruce Ames published a review article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that gives that second question a shape.⁴
What was studied: this is a proposal and not a trial, and that comes first. Ames proposes sorting proteins by what they are for, those for immediate survival and reproduction against those that protect health in the long term, and the proposal is that when a nutrient is slightly short, the body serves the short term first.
How: a review of existing work in support of a hypothesis the author calls the triage theory, plus a proposed group of nutrients the author names longevity vitamins.
The findings, named for what they are: this is a way of thinking with evidence gathered around it, and not an experiment with a result. What it gives you is a reason why a deficiency can feel like nothing at all for a long time, and why waiting until you feel a deficiency is a poor way of spotting one.
Then the last piece. In 2010 David Kennedy and colleagues published a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind study in Psychopharmacology.⁵
What was studied: whether a high-dose B complex with minerals changes the mood and the thinking of healthy people.
How: 215 men aged 30 to 55, all in full time work, took one branded product with many ingredients, or a placebo, for 33 days. At the start and again afterwards they filled in the Profile of Mood States, the Perceived Stress Scale and the General Health Questionnaire, plus a 60 minute thinking battery, and on the last day a 40 minute Stroop task while walking on an inclined treadmill.
The findings: the group on the supplement scored better on perceived stress, on the general health questionnaire and on the scale for energy and resilience, performed better on the serial threes subtraction, and rated themselves as less mentally tired, both going into that thinking battery and coming out of it.
What that study cannot say, and it counts: one product with many ingredients was tested, so no single vitamin or mineral in it can take the credit, and the participants were healthy working men in a narrow age group.
So the new position is this. Intake is one question, your own week is another, and that second one has never properly been put to you.
On one condition. That analysis has to be about you: your energy through the day, your dips, your own answers, question by question, set beside what published research describes. A general list of energy tips does not tell you which signals in your week are the hard ones.
BioProfile has built that first step. A scientifically validated questionnaire, five minutes, free and with no account.
You answer questions about your energy through the day and about your daily life. After that you see which signals in your profile speak loudest, and what the research says about them. Not a medical examination. An analysis of your own answers. You use the outcome yourself, or you put it on the table with your doctor or your coach.
Then the daily side. What I put into it myself every morning is a glass: Green Juice, a plant-based all-in-one daily drink mix with more than 44 ingredients, including vitamins, minerals, herbs, grasses, fruit, vegetables, algae, probiotics and digestive enzymes. The B vitamins in it and minerals such as chromium and potassium contribute to a normal energy-yielding metabolism and to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue through the day. One glass, every day, as a steady base.
And to put it plainly: this is a daily nutritional basis. Not an answer to your afternoon. Mapping out the pattern of your own week is still something you do yourself. That is what those five minutes are for.
You do the free check. Five minutes, no account, and there is nothing to buy.
Even if you do nothing with it, you have traded "I must be doing something wrong" for an analysis of your own answers. That trade is worth five minutes.
And the next time four o'clock comes round, you will know which signals in your profile speak loudest.
Do it while this page is still open. Tomorrow afternoon is coming either way.
Our scientifically validated questionnaire gives you answers
The scan is not a medical examination. It is an analysis of your own answers. If complaints persist, consult your doctor.
