What Is a Vitamin?
The term “vitamin” was introduced in 1912 by a Polish scientist, Casimir Funk, to describe natural substances in food that are essential for life. Working on symptoms of beriberi, Funk proposed that four specific diseases were caused by a lack of four different vital “amines” in the diet: scurvy (severe blood loss from leaky blood vessels – a lack of vitamin C), rickets (softening of the bones – a lack of vitamin D), pellagra (skin changes, persistent diarrhea, dementia – a lack of vitamin B3), and beriberi (enlarged and weak heart, pain in the limbs, weak muscles – a lack of vitamin B1). Today, we know that there are more than 20 organic molecules called vitamins, each of which has a different chemical structure and role in the body. There are two distinct groups of vitamins: those that are soluble in water (vitamin C and all B – vitamins) and are distributed throughout all watery components of the cell; and those that are soluble in fat (vitamins A, D, E and K), which are found mostl
