Selenium!!

[pretty on the inside]

I guess you learn something new everyday. I thought I knew just about everything about nutrition, but I guess I was wrong! I have been tracking my foods on fitday for about a month and I just decided to look at my "Nutrition as part RDA" section.. apparently, I am consuming 170% of the recommended amount of daily Selenium! I had never heard of this before! Apparently it has goods and bads. Basically my whole point of this post is to get imput from you guys and to make others aware if they arent. Anybody have anything else to add about Selenium? Maybe in lamans terms? lol. thanks

[nelie]

I'm taking nutrition and I was just reading about selenium. Any extra selenium does nothing as your body excretes it and selenium deficiency is quite rare although there is an area in China where selenium deficiency does occur due to lack of selenium in the soil and most people in the area eating food grown in the area.

Overall, it isn't a trace mineral that I'd be too concerned about lacking.

[bellaella]

Selenium MAY help against prostate cancer so ive heard!
just my 2 cents!

[nelie]

I don't think that is the case. For some reason, a selenium deficiency can make you prone to cancer but that doesn't mean it would help against either an existing cancer or prevention of cancer unless you are deficient, which again is VERY rare.

[silverbirch]

My lay person's understanding is that proper land management (without over-worked fields or high use of fertiliser) produces crops with enough selenium for our needs. Big Business agriculture may be less (no?) good at this. And that three Brazil nuts a day provide enough.

[Esofia]

Actually, half a brazil nut a day provides enough. My current multivitamin doesn't have any selenium and I don't seem to be getting much from my diet, so I've bought a bag of brazil nuts to tide me over until I start the new multivitamins.

[savvybee]

Selenium content depends on the soil. It's different all over the world.. Basically, in the US, the way they determine selenium content is: The government tests the selenium content of produce from all over the country, and then the "average" is what is posted in all food databases and such.

Example: tomatoes from Louisiana may have more selenium than tomatoes from Minnesota, but a food database is going to say that they have the same amount of selenium: the average of all samples taken of tomatoes across the country.

This only applies to produce though. I'm sure processed foods aren't as affected by soil quality.

So basically: food databases are not going to be completely accurate concerning selenium, especially if you eat a lot of produce.

[Esofia]

I've just discovered that wholewheat pasta provides a hefty amount of selenium. I'd forgotten that when I add foods to my FitDay database individually and just add the basic nutritional info on the packet, that only includes the macronutrients and there are still the micronutrients to be accounted for.