Vitamins

Vitamins are substances that occur in small quantities in food.

They are nutritional components which, unlike nutrients (carbohydrates, fats and proteins), do not provide energy, but which are essential for the proper

functioning of metabolism.

There are two major groups of vitamins to be distinguished, the fat-soluble and the water-soluble vitamins.

Most water-soluble vitamins are converted in vivo (in an organism) into coenzymes that work together with metabolic enzymes to perform their biochemical

functions. Vitamins can also act directly in specific places in the metabolism.

Some vitamins only obtain their final form in the body; the form in which they occur before that is called pro-vitamins. The name vitamin is a word formed from the Latin vita (which means life) and amine (an organic chemical nitrogen compound). This name was first used by Kasimir Funk in 1910.

A large part of the vitamins has since been chemically investigated. It has been found that only one or a few of the vitamins is actually an amine, while all the

others belong to other chemical groups. The name vitamin is therefore not correct, but it has simply become so established.

While vitamins fulfil the same role in all living life forms, higher organisms (such as humans) have lost their ability to produce vitamins. In the absence of a vitamin, diseases can occur, which can be remedied by timely administration of the missing vitamin.

The diseases that arise from a lack of vitamins are called deficiency diseases or avitaminoses (for example beriberi and scurvy).

Click here for an explanation