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From the article: "According to the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, an adult’s estimated average dietary requirement for copper is about

From the article: "According to the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, an adult’s estimated average dietary requirement for copper is about 700 micrograms per day. The Food and Nutrition Board also found that only 25 percent of the U.S. population gets enough copper daily." Not to put down your experience or the difficulty of your recovery, but the notion that "copper deficiency is rare" doesn't seem to be supported by the article. Have you got better sources? What are they? Being clinically deficient in something (scurvy, say, for vitamin C) versus mildly deficient are two entirely different things.

gregable 10y ago
Looking at a bottle of Centrum Mens Multivitamins, they list that it includes 900 mcg of copper and that this is only 45% of the recommended daily value (presumably because too much is bad and folks get some in their diet already). However, this also suggests that the recommended daily value is 2000 mcg, rather than the 700 mcg listed in the article.
- tormeh 10y ago
  How often are you supposed to take that vitamin?
- JonathonW 10y ago
  The FDA's Reference Daily Intake (on which nutrition labeling is based) is 2mg [1]. That number differs from the National Academies number [2] (that's the 700 μg referenced in the article, for non-pregnant, non-lactating adults); why, I don't know. [1] http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm064928.htm http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments... [2] http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Nutrition/DRI-Tables/1_%20EARs.pdf?la=en http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Activity%...
  - wahern 10y ago
    Probably because the methodologies used to determine the proper intake are very rudimentary. For example, for some nutrients the RDA is whatever it takes to start seeing it excreted in urine. The analogy would be like a cup overflowing. How you get from that to recommending the "proper" intake requires making a significant number of unproven assumptions. So there's usually quite significant room for disagreement, especially as new evidence ever so slowly emerges. It doesn't help that trying to pinpoint a single number for each specific nutrient is a rather arbitrary goal. Which is why the "balanced diet" approaches makes the most sense as a general recommendation--it's an affirmation not of what we do know, but of what we don't know.
    - jrapdx3 10y ago
      It's true, determining a) what's required to prevent deficiency and b) what's optimum for health are subject to interpretation of available (and often incomplete) data, hence lots of controversy. I'm familiar with these issues surrounding vitamin D. There's no doubt it's essential, but the optimum intake and blood levels remains uncertain. Nonetheless no shortage of opinions are out there despite the uncertainty of findings backing up any particular stance. IMO the problem in pinning it down is the wide range of effects of nutritional factors like vitamin D. Body systems are in constant flux, and need for vitamin D and optimum amount in circulation varies accordingly. The situation with trace minerals is somewhat similar when the mineral is an essential cofactor in specific enzyme-mediated processes--effects of low intake of the mineral element may not be easily observed from a whole-body perspective, and attribution of particular body manifestations to a mineral deficiency can be hard to establish. I think that's the case with copper and other trace minerals and I don't expect the questions to be unequivocally resolved any time soon. Your idea of a "balanced", intake of diverse good quality foods is the only sensible recommendation we can make, especially since there's quite a bit of research showing merit of that approach.
- STRiDEX 10y ago
  My bottle of Bayer mens one a day says 2mg 100%
farresito 10y ago
I think you are right. In fact, I would go further and say that we don't take enough minerals overall because the food we eat has been processed too much, so we are probably deficient in a lot of other minerals. I guess what I wanted to say is that you will find more people with high dangerous copper levels than low, especially among women because of the copper they add in birth control products.
- refurb 10y ago
  Could you explain what you mean by "processed" food? Grinding up wheat is processing it, but it does nothing to remove minerals. It seems like "processed" is a catch all and now means "bad".
  - maxander 10y ago
    Its an imprecise and catchall term, but not entirely untrue. A good example of "processed food" is refined grain (non-whole-wheat bread, etc); there, various outer layers and components of each grain are milled out, leaving just the tasty starchy inner bit. Different parts of the grain will have different vitamin content, if you take only one part you may well end up with a smaller set of vitamins overall. Its not the only reason that that's bad (whole wheat is generally recommended mostly on the basis of glycemic index), but its not necessarily trivial, either.
  - dgreensp 10y ago
    Processing absolutely does remove minerals, along with vitamins and fiber, such as when you make white flour by removing the "bran and germ" of the wheat grain. Most often, one particular part of a food is extracted, potentially subjected to high heats and/or chemical processes in order to alter the taste, consistency, shelf life, or other properties of the substance, and then combined with other such substances. For example, a cracker might consist of flour, soybean oil (i.e. fat extracted from soybeans by soaking them in chemicals called hexanes and hydrogenated), corn syrup (sugar extracted from corn), and corn starch. The human body needs dozens of micronutrients that are easily found in a bite of a naturally-occurring food but easily absent from an artificial food, especially when the necessary sugars, fats, and starches have been sourced as cheaply and conveniently as possible for manufacturing. This isn't a value judgment, and I love eating processed foods.

gregable 10y ago

Looking at a bottle of Centrum Mens Multivitamins, they list that it includes 900 mcg of copper and that this is only 45% of the recommended daily value (presumably because too much is bad and folks get some in their diet already). However, this also suggests that the recommended daily value is 2000 mcg, rather than the 700 mcg listed in the article.

tormeh 10y ago
How often are you supposed to take that vitamin?
JonathonW 10y ago
The FDA's Reference Daily Intake (on which nutrition labeling is based) is 2mg [1]. That number differs from the National Academies number [2] (that's the 700 μg referenced in the article, for non-pregnant, non-lactating adults); why, I don't know. [1] http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm064928.htm http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments... [2] http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Nutrition/DRI-Tables/1_%20EARs.pdf?la=en http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Activity%...
- wahern 10y ago
  Probably because the methodologies used to determine the proper intake are very rudimentary. For example, for some nutrients the RDA is whatever it takes to start seeing it excreted in urine. The analogy would be like a cup overflowing. How you get from that to recommending the "proper" intake requires making a significant number of unproven assumptions. So there's usually quite significant room for disagreement, especially as new evidence ever so slowly emerges. It doesn't help that trying to pinpoint a single number for each specific nutrient is a rather arbitrary goal. Which is why the "balanced diet" approaches makes the most sense as a general recommendation--it's an affirmation not of what we do know, but of what we don't know.
  - jrapdx3 10y ago
    It's true, determining a) what's required to prevent deficiency and b) what's optimum for health are subject to interpretation of available (and often incomplete) data, hence lots of controversy. I'm familiar with these issues surrounding vitamin D. There's no doubt it's essential, but the optimum intake and blood levels remains uncertain. Nonetheless no shortage of opinions are out there despite the uncertainty of findings backing up any particular stance. IMO the problem in pinning it down is the wide range of effects of nutritional factors like vitamin D. Body systems are in constant flux, and need for vitamin D and optimum amount in circulation varies accordingly. The situation with trace minerals is somewhat similar when the mineral is an essential cofactor in specific enzyme-mediated processes--effects of low intake of the mineral element may not be easily observed from a whole-body perspective, and attribution of particular body manifestations to a mineral deficiency can be hard to establish. I think that's the case with copper and other trace minerals and I don't expect the questions to be unequivocally resolved any time soon. Your idea of a "balanced", intake of diverse good quality foods is the only sensible recommendation we can make, especially since there's quite a bit of research showing merit of that approach.
STRiDEX 10y ago
My bottle of Bayer mens one a day says 2mg 100%

farresito 10y ago

I think you are right. In fact, I would go further and say that we don't take enough minerals overall because the food we eat has been processed too much, so we are probably deficient in a lot of other minerals. I guess what I wanted to say is that you will find more people with high dangerous copper levels than low, especially among women because of the copper they add in birth control products.

refurb 10y ago
Could you explain what you mean by "processed" food? Grinding up wheat is processing it, but it does nothing to remove minerals. It seems like "processed" is a catch all and now means "bad".
- maxander 10y ago
  Its an imprecise and catchall term, but not entirely untrue. A good example of "processed food" is refined grain (non-whole-wheat bread, etc); there, various outer layers and components of each grain are milled out, leaving just the tasty starchy inner bit. Different parts of the grain will have different vitamin content, if you take only one part you may well end up with a smaller set of vitamins overall. Its not the only reason that that's bad (whole wheat is generally recommended mostly on the basis of glycemic index), but its not necessarily trivial, either.
- dgreensp 10y ago
  Processing absolutely does remove minerals, along with vitamins and fiber, such as when you make white flour by removing the "bran and germ" of the wheat grain. Most often, one particular part of a food is extracted, potentially subjected to high heats and/or chemical processes in order to alter the taste, consistency, shelf life, or other properties of the substance, and then combined with other such substances. For example, a cracker might consist of flour, soybean oil (i.e. fat extracted from soybeans by soaking them in chemicals called hexanes and hydrogenated), corn syrup (sugar extracted from corn), and corn starch. The human body needs dozens of micronutrients that are easily found in a bite of a naturally-occurring food but easily absent from an artificial food, especially when the necessary sugars, fats, and starches have been sourced as cheaply and conveniently as possible for manufacturing. This isn't a value judgment, and I love eating processed foods.