In the comments, Jenny led me to a wealth of great articles about fat-soluble vitamins and supplements, which I am going to link to here on the main page.

Everyone is hearing about the importance of antioxidants in preventing all kinds of degenerative diseases. However, in response, most people are wasting their money on inferior, ineffective and perhaps even harmful synthetic versions of antioxidants.

A pause to assert my opinion - DON’T buy Centrum or any cheap, nasty, synthetic bottle of nothing that resembles food whatsoever. It kills me every time I see a sweet old couple with Centrum silver in their cart. Your supplements should be food based. Your body was made to eat food, not something produced in a chemical factory.

Back to the topic - When even a chemical company admits and writes at length about the ineffectiveness of synthetic Vitamin E, you know you can take such information to the bank. Literally. Cognis, linked to above, summarizes, “bioavailability of natural vitamin E is approximately twice that of synthetic vitamin E compounds.”

Look on your bottles - if it reads “d-alpha tocopherol”, this is the most common natural form. One little letter change “dl-alpha tocopherol” makes it synthetic and not worth your money. “The synthetic dl-alpha-tocopherol is a mixture of eight different molecular entities; chemists call them “stereoisomers”. Of these eight, only one is identical to the natural form d-alpha tocopherols. The other seven do not exist in nature.”

Dr. Mercola’s ever succinct and helpful articles state this,

“Please understand that vitamin E is actually composed of two natural compounds, tocopherols and tocotrienols, each with four forms (alpha-, beta-, gamma-, and delta-tocopherol, and alpha-, beta-, gamma- and delta-tocotrienol). Each form has its own potency and its own functional use in the body. . . Full-spectrum vitamin E, which contains a mixture of tocopherols (alpha, beta, delta, and gamma) and tocotrienols (alpha, beta, delta, and gamma), may be a wise choice to protect against disease and provide maximum benefits.”

I checked out my Nordic Naturals cod liver oil and it contains “mixed tocopherols,” which does not inform me as to whether they are synthetic or natural. Based on the reputation of the company, I hope they are food-based, but I need to contact the company to find out. Which ever they are, they are added to Nordic in a small quantity (17% RDA) mostly as a preservative, not as a vitamin supplement. Antioxidents keep oils from going rancid.

I will also choose to look for d-alpha tocopherol in my skin care products.