While growing their own food was quite common years ago, most people these days prefer buying their vegetables and fruits. And why not, it saves so much time an effort on their part. However, while doing this what you do end up with deficiencies of key vitamins and minerals.

This is why more and more people are considering growing the food they consume. While store-bought vegetables are convenient, they come with their own drawbacks. You have no idea where they have been grown for starters. These foods also are grown in big farms where often harmful additives and pesticides are used to ripen them earlier than usual.

You will also need to consider soil depletion. Soil needs to be rich in some key nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, copper, potassium, and zinc. If the soil is low in these nutrients, the resultant food will also be low in these minerals and the vitamins that you do consume will not get absorbed appropriately.

You also cannot ignore the problems occuring when food is stored. Once it is harvested, the food is transported and then sold in the supermarkets. Even after you buy it, you may be keeping these vegetables in your refrigerator for a few days. These definitely leads to a loss of freshness in the vegetables and it also depletes its vitamins. For example, potatoes lose 50% of their vitamin C content within two months of being harvested. The more you store it, the the more loss of vitamin is seen.

So, how can you increase the B vitamins and vitamin C in your vegetables? Grow it yourself in your own vegetable garden. Take for instance, barley grass. It is one of the best health foods for increasing energy and boosting the immune system. This is why many people are buying and taking its juice. However, if you grow it yourself, you will find that it contains more vitamins and minerals.

You could even grow your own chlorella or spirulina which are rich sources of vitamin C, rather than take vitamin C capsules. However, with these algae you need to exercise much more caution since these may very well turn into something that not right to be eaten. For instance, if the water in which you grow your algae is polluted with heavy metals, it may not be good for human consumption. This is why it may be better to stick to consuming these vitamin-rich foods in the form of supplements.

Vitamin deficiencies can make you to feel fatigued and fall sick frequently. The best thing to do here is to increase the consumption of B vitamins and others by eating home-grown food.