Sources of Vitamin E - Find Out How You Can Overcome Vitamin E Deficiency And Achieve Excellent Health!

What are the major food sources of vitamin E? What are the reasons behind its deficiency and how should you supplement it? What are its recommended DV's for optimal health? Find the answers here.

According to estimates made by the United States government, 68% of all men and 71% of all women are not getting adequate amounts of vitamin E in their regular diets. This implies that more than half of the individuals reading this page at this point of time are not getting enough of vitamin E that is essential for optimal health!

One of the reasons for this is that while there are many food sources of vitamin E available, there is a small availability of really good vitamin E food sources -- that provide 10% or more of the vitamin E RDA (recommended daily allowance).

For a healthy adult, the RDA of vitamin E is around 15 mg. For nursing mothers, the RDA of vitamin D increases to 19 mg due to the increased vitamin needs.

Reasons for Vitamin E Deficiency

Here are some of the main reasons for the vitamin E deficiency in a majority of the people --

1) While there are many foods containing vitamin E, it is found in relatively quite small amounts in them, and it is found in those foods that many people don't consume often.

2) Besides that, vitamin E can be classified as a fat soluble vitamin. It is mostly found in the fatty part of foods. As the emphasis on low-fat diets is increasing day by day, this is cutting down on the best vitamin E sources for most people.

So, keeping all this in mind, what are the foods that you should be consuming to ensure that you are getting enough vitamin E in your regular diet?

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) specifies that good vitamin E food sources can be classified as those that provide 10 to 19% of the DV in a single serving. Excellent sources of vitamin E can be regarded as those that provide more than 20% of the DV in a single serving.

Those foods providing less than 5% of the DV are classified as low vitamin E sources.

Food Sources of Vitamin E

Here are some of the most common vitamin E food sources:

Vegetable Oils

Vegetable oils contain good amount of vitamin E. Here are some of the types of vegetable oils rich in vitamin E (serving size for each equals 1 tablespoon):

• Soybean oil 6%
• corn oil 10%
• safflower oil 25%
• sunflower oil 30%
• wheat germ oil 100%

Suggestions for use: you can cook your food with these vegetable oils or you can use them in salad dressings. One thing to keep in mind is that prolonged cooking of vegetable oils at high temperatures may destroy the vitamin A contained in them.

Nuts

Besides the above mentioned vegetable oils, nuts are also significant sources of vitamin E. Here are a few types of nuts that are rich in vitamin E (serving size for each equals 1 ounce, dry roasted):

• peanuts 10%
• hazelnuts 25%
• sunflower seed kernels 30%
• almonds 40%

Vegetables

Dark green leafy vegetables are also quite rich in vitamin E; though not as much as vegetable oils and nuts.

Sweet Potato	baked	1 med	20%
Avocado	mashed	1/2 cup	15%
Spinach	cooked/chopped	1/2 cup	6%
Spinach	raw	1 cup	4%
Broccoli	chopped/boiled	1/2 cup	6%

Animal Products

There are also a few protein sources of vitamin E as well. Most animal products are not excellent vitamin E food sources, but there are few exceptions to it.

Salmon	canned	6%
Tuna	canned in oil	6%
Eggs	1 yolk	5%

Supplemental Sources of Vitamin E

If you suffer from any health condition that interferes with your body's fat absorption capacity, or you are on low-fat diets, then you might need to add supplementary vitamin E sources to your diet in the form of vitamin supplements.

It is also noteworthy that you choose a vitamin E supplement that contains full spectrum of vitamin E, rather than just one or two forms of vitamin E.

To gain more information on why this is so important and what supplement we personally use, click here to learn more about choosing the optimal vitamin E supplement.