Food-State Vitamins

I was in my local healthfood place today. Browsing through the supplements section I noted that you can buy, for instance, a 500mg Calcium supplement - but the equivalent in the food-state section was only 50mg. And in general, the food-state vitamins have much lower amounts of the vitamin or mineral.

When I asked the store person about this she said that it was because the food-state vits were more bioavailable and that, therefore, much less was needed.

This is fine but it raises two questions; one, if you're aiming for say 500mg of something do you have to take more or less of these? and two, are regular supplements really only giving you a tenth of the value on the label? The store person didn't seem 100% so I said I'd ask you guys.

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge with these?

Did anyone else notice?

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