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The Basics

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Vital Amines to Vitamins

The word vitamin comes from vital amine , or vitamine , a term coined by the Polish scientist Casimir Funk in 1911. He isolated a substance in

Vitamins are organic substances, meaning they contain carbon and are made naturally by plants and animals. Minerals are inorganic substances, meaning they are chemical compounds that do not contain carbon and are found in nonliving substances like rocks, soil, and water. Plants absorb inorganic substances and animals (including humans) eat them, but don’t make them themselves. Heat, air, and acid can all change the chemical structure of organic substances, while inorganic substances maintain their chemical structure. This means that heat from cooking, exposure to light, and other environmental factors can destroy some vitamins before you consume them. There are two ways of obtaining vitamins: either the body makes them on its own, or we eat them. There are 13 vitamins essential to the human body; of these, we are only able to synthesize, or produce, vitamins D and B 3 (also known as niacin). Your skin makes vitamin D whenever you expose it to the ultraviolet B rays in sunlight. Just 15 minutes of sun a few times a week is enough to get the recommended levels—a good reason to get outside! When we eat foods high in the amino acid tryptophan, including meat, eggs, and dairy products, our liver converts it into vitamin B 3 . Some of our intestinal bacteria can synthesize a type of vitamin K called K 2 , but we need to eat plenty of leafy green vegetables and whole grains to make sure we’re brown rice that helped prevent beriberi, a disease that affects the nervous system and causes crippling weakness in the limbs. Because the substance had a nitrogen- containing group called an amine , Funk called it a vitamine —an amine that was vital to life. Later it was discovered that not all “vitamines” contained nitrogen or were amines, so the “e” was dropped to form the modern spelling. ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

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