Benefits of Vitamins

Vitamins are the stars of the nutrition scene. Nutrition, the science of food, is the study of the nutrients and substances in foods.  Scientists examine how the balances of food compounds relate to health and disease, and explore how they interact during the process of ingestion, absorption, utilization, and excretion.

Vitamins are among of the six essential nutrients for body health and repair.  The remaining five essentials are carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, and water. We obtain these nutrients through diet; our bodies can’t manufacture them.  These six essentials are the building blocks of life.

The History of Vitamins

So far, there are fourteen known vitamins required by humans.   Vitamins were discovered in the late 1800s.  They are organic compounds found in foods, and since they are organic, (containing carbon), they can be destroyed by heat.  Minerals, the companion essential nutrient, are impervious to heat.

At the beginning of the 20th century, as scientists discovered new vitamins, they were named alphabetically. Vitamins A, B, C, D, E~. K. The missing letters (F, G, H, I, J), are the compounds that didn’t quite fit the definition:  a vitamin is an organic compound needed in very small quantities to sustain the growth and maintenance of living things.  The vitamins with letters and numbers, like B1, B2, and so on, were compounds that were believed at first to be one, but later found to be several compounds, each with a particular function.

Fat Soluble or Water Soluble?

Vitamins are in one of two classes: fat soluble or water soluble. Vitamin C and the B vitamins (such as niacin and riboflavin) are water soluble. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat soluble.  Which type of solubility each vitamin has will indicate which foods contain them.  Basically, non-fat food has no fat soluble vitamins.  However, highly colored vegetables like carrots do contain beta-carotene – a proto-vitamin which can be converted to active vitamin A.

Water soluble vitamins are easily shed by the body and lost from foods during preparation.  Since they aren’t stored by the body, we need to ingest them every day. Nevertheless it is best to avoid taking them excessively. On the other hand, fat soluble vitamins are readily stored by the body.  Thus caution is necessary to avoid excessive quantities; it is possible to build up toxic levels of the fat soluble vitamins.

Do You Really Need Supplements?

A common question is, “Do I need to take vitamin supplements, and which vitamins should I be taking for optimum health?”  The modern situation is that our daily foods come from conditions very unusual in human history. Our food are more processed and grown in more depleted soil, they are picked earlier (unripe and nutritionally incomplete) and then shipped farther than ever before.  It is unlikely that in the average diet we therefore consume sufficient quantities of the necessary nutrients – particularly vitamins and minerals.  At the same time we ingest excessive quantities of harmful substances such as preservatives and refined flours and sugars.

A suggestion.  Do your own research project.  Keep track of what you eat for a week or two.  Eat normally, and just write down what you ate and how much of it.  Then either buy or check out from your library a book on vitamins that will tell you approximately what you got from each food source.  Add it up and compare to the recommended daily allowances.  See how you’re doing, and if you think it’s a good idea to make some improvements, consult with a professional nutritionist, naturopathic physician, or other healthcare professional to come up with a good plan of diet and nutritional supplements.  You’ll see what a profound difference good nutrition can make in your health.

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by Carina Snowden, Writer and Nutrition Specialist.