Treasure! I’ve just been sorting out some old books and this piece of paper dropped out of it. A recipe for herbal health capsules given to me about 20 years ago.
All the ingredients are pretty easy to get. I have most of them in my garden or cupboard and I’ll sprout some alfalfa especially for it. Watercress and kelp usually aren’t a problem to find in NZ. Considering good quality multi-vitamins cost about NZ$40 a month right now, I’m really keen to give this a go. This should only cost me the gelatine caps, or if I wanted to cut it down even further, use one of my husband’s cigarette papers to wrap it up in to swallow (not half as bad as it sounds).
88888 Disclaimer: I haven’t tried this, I don’t vouch for it. I am not a trained nutritionist, doctor, or herbalist. But since these are all things I would eat anyway, I’m willing to give it ago. 88888
Health capsules
Mix together and grind the following ingredients into a powder (mortar and pestle or coffee grinder). Stuff the powder into 00 gelatin capsules available at any pharmacy or health food store, and take 1 capsule 3 times a day. (Editor’s note: I’m assuming all these ingredients should be dried if you want to get it to a powder).
1/4 cup dandelion root – vitamins A, E and calcium
1/4 cup alfalfa – vitamins A, E, K, niacin and vegetable hormones
1/4 cup watercress – vitamins A, C, E, niacin, iron and fluorine
1/4 cup parsley – vitamins A, C, niacin and iron
1/4 cup rose hips – vitamin C
1/4 cup kelp – vitamins C, K and B-group, zinc, copper, calcium, iron, manganese, magnesium and iodine
Oh great post! They always say that vitamins are only useful if dietary intake is insufficient, so I had an inkling that there must be a way to make your own supplements. I also like that everything is so easy to come by – I don’t have to go looking for herbal things in weird shops that I don’t want to be seen walking into.
Thank you. The thing I like about this is that you aren’t taking isolated compounds from the plants, you’re taking the whole plant, if you know what I mean? Most vitamins and mineral capsules are stripped of other beneficial parts of the plant and given to us in isolation, ignoring the synergistic effects. These capsules are therefore more wholistic and I’m sure, much better for you.
Enjoy!
Because I wasn’t very eloquent before, you might like to take a look at Small Bite’s well-formed post on the subject here:
http://smallbitesnutrition.blogspot.com/2008/11/in-news-eat-food-not-vitamins.html