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While many people know that processing food destroys vital nutrients, few realize that the synthetic “vitamins” added back to processed foods—and found in most supplement bottles—are nothing like vitamins as they exist in whole foods. This simple but profound fact underlies Stephanie Anderson’s brilliant guide to nutrition and health, Why Your Doctor Offers Nutritional Supplements.

Vitamins in food are never just the “active” compounds listed on supplement labels, Anderson explains, but rather they are groups of nearly countless compounds that work in concert to deliver a “vitamin effect” to the body. Synthetics, on the other hand, merely isolate one of a vitamin’s many cooperating compounds and as a result tend to upset the body’s biochemical balance. Thus, when choosing a dietary supplement, it is absolutely critical to opt for food concentrates.

Going beyond supplementation, Anderson also examines the basis of sound eating, including a discussion of The Seven Deadly Fallacies of the Western Diet as well as how to tell what’s truly good for you at the “health” food store. Succinct and poignant, Why Your Doctor Offers Nutritional Supplements is a one-stop reference on whole-food nutrition, holistic health, and dietary supplementation.