Well, Sgt. Rock, you'd just about have to use mail drops at those locations...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SGT Rock
I would feel very safe if I were picking up a mail drop at those locations.
As, virtually all grocery store chains have abandoned that wreck of a city.
Jack, it's not reasonable IMO for you to bring up a subject, and then object to it being discussed. That's kind of a WD pattern.
Point related to original topic...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Appalachian Tater
Also, a multi-vitamin with minerals is not a bad idea.
Yes to a point. I carried them and took them regularly during my thruhike last year.
However, there are multiple limitations to multivits that prevent them from making up for a typically fecal-quality hiker diet.
1) Certain nutrients are too bulky to fit in a single small pill. For example, Calcium in my experience is not added to multis over about 10% of daily adult needs (and needs to be ingested more than once a day in any event).
2) Not all pills dissolve as intended. If one passes through the digestive system without completely dissolving (known in the trade as "bullets"), its nutritive worth will be below what its label indicates. This is not rare, BTW.
3) There are probably some essential nutrients not yet identified by scientists, which thus MUST come from eating food that contains it. An indication of this is how a defined nutrient growth media (solely consisting of specific pure known-essential chemicals) for microbes will not result in as fast of growth as one including complex supplements. So, frequently eating significant amounts of complex, nutrient-dense foods (primarily milk, liver, wheat germ, oily/cold-water fish and various "true" dark greens, with occasional egg WHITES, unroasted nuts, shellfish, and dark cane molasses) is advantageous for anyone, but especially serious hikers, the ill, young, elderly, etc.
4) The most insidious aspect to multivit pills IMO is how the definition of some nutrients is overly loose, resulting in synthetic versions of them being of reduced usefulness. This is IMO more of a problem for larger-molecular-weight ones such as vitamins than for simple minerals, although even those may have some variation in worth, depending on source. I read an abstract of a study that indicated that synthetic B-6 had only about 40% of the nutritional value as an equal quantity of biologic-(food) origin B-6.
One reason for this phenomenon is based on vitamins being organic (carbon and hydrogen) molecules, many of which exhibit a "handedness" called optical orientation, or "chirality". Consider your left and right hands; they are quite similiar in shape, but are not the same, being mirror images of each other impossible to superimpose on each other. Pairs of compounds with this property are called "enantiomers", or "racemates".
It is common for the simplest, least-expensive organic molecule syntheses to produce mixtures of equal amounts of the two racemates, often called "racemic mixtures". Unfortunately, it is common, even routine, for the human body to only be able to use one of these two racemates.
That said, it's best by far IMO to devise one's diet to try hard to not need multivits, while still making use of them. And, one should obtain the best-quality (ideally, biologic-origin) supplements.
Also on my early maildrops...
I personally delivered a couple of boxes (including some infamous distilled water) to Neels Gap (my first resupply point) when I went there about 4 days before I started at Amicalola to buy some final gear items. I had planned to later that same day drop off a box at the Blueberry Patch hostel in Hiawassee, but one of the employees at Neels graciously offered to drop it off for me (they were going to drive to Hiawassee in the next several days in any event), so I appreciatively took them up on it. I also mailed a drop to the NOC before starting. I do not remember if I mailed my drop to Fontana before starting, or had my support person mail it after I started.