Fara 23 February 2009 Food Pyramid, General Health, Nutritions 816 views No Comment/Trackback Print This Post  Email This Post

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Vitamins and Its Importance – List of different vitamin types

Vitamins can be classified as one of the most supplied and important supplement, where each described has its own unique strings of functions. It was in the early 1900s that a Polish scientist named Casimir Funk proposed the term vitamine for a group of substances, which he had discovered. It literally means vital amine, where the word amine is a nitrogen-containing compound. However, later he found that some of the elements of these vitamine substances cannot be classified as amine and the letter ‘e’ was dropped –resulting to the beginning of ‘vitamin’ instead.

Basically, most vitamins are needed by a human body in a very small amount for the sake of growth and maintenance of life. Recent studies even show that certain vitamins are vital and efficient in preventing and curing certain diseases. Of course, there are so many kinds of vitamin which are most identified by letters and numbers added to the letter name. Some vitamins have hormone like activity while some are components of enzymes.

Vitamins can be categorized into two groups according to its solubility, which is either fat-soluble or water-soluble. Fat-soluble vitamins are found in the fatty parts of cells and foods. This group of vitamins includes vitamin A, D, E and K. Where as water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin C and B-Complex are easily found in the watery parts of cells. However, the fat-soluble vitamins are considered to be more stable than the water-soluble vitamins due to the most obvious fact that the vitamins won’t be easily lost through cooking or storage of food. The water-soluble vitamins are more readily lost in cooking water and can be easily destroyed by heat.

Below are the table of the types of vitamins and its many functions:

Nutritionist and health expertise have advised the use if vitamin supplements since long time ago in order to treat nutritional deficiencies. With today’s craze of variety foods effortlessly being available at all time, we’re getting more of trash and junks through it, and less of the important nutrition. But beware, it is also equally crucial for you to know that you are getting less, adequate or more of the vitamins, because overdose may cause some adverse effects such as toxic effects, interruption or disruption in the interaction with other nutrients or drugs and gradual dependency.

 Related posts:

1. Introduction of Vitamin B and its functions
2. Functions of Vitamin K with List of Foods High in Vitamin K
3. The functions and list of foods rich in Vitamin A
4. Importance of fat: Good fats vs bad fats
5. Getting to Know the Sources and Benefits of Vitamin D