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Vitamins
- Nov 24, 2009 at 9:15 AM
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- Comments (2) Total Views (322) Everyone can see this journal post.
Vitamins are organic compounds required in small amounts as nutrients. In this case, the term "organic" is used as a chemical term, meaning "containing carbon". Vitamins, in general, cannot be synthesized in large enough quanitites by an organism, so they need to obtain these compounds from their diet. You may think of an exception or two - there are always exceptions!
Vitamins are classified into groups based on chemical function, not their structure. For this reason, each vitamin could be a variety of chemical compounds (vitamer), each with their own chemical name. These vitamers all show the same biological activity, and are often converted to other compounds in the body. Vitamers can make reading ingredient labels a bit tricky (check out the group Label Reading for general help and information). A component that sounds like a chemical name may be a vitamin! Use the list below to find vitamins in your ingredients lists!
Vitamin group (vitamers = names of compounds recognized in this vitamin group)
Vitamin A - retinol, retinoic acid, retinal, retinoids (plus some carotinoids)
Vitamin B1 - thiamine, thiamine HCl
Vitamin B2 - riboflavin
Vitamin B3 - niacinamide, nicotinamide, nicotinic acid amide
Vitamin B4 - choline cloride
Vitamin B5 - pantothenic acid, pantothenate, D-Caclcium pantothenate
Vitamin B6 - pyridoxine HCl, pyrodoxamine, pyidoxal
Vitamin B7 - biotin (formerly known as vitamin H)
Vitamin B8 - inositol
Vitamin B9 - folic acid, folacin, folate, folinic acid
Vitamin B12 - cobalt, cobalamin, cyanocobalamin, hydroxycobalamin, methylcobalamine
Vitamin C - ascorbic acid, ascorbate
Vitamin D - calciferol, ergocalciferol, cholecalciferol
Vitamin E - tocopherol, tocotrienols
Vitamin K - phylloquinone, naphthoquinone, menaquinones
This aim of this post is to help you identify vitamins listed in ingredient labels. If you would like more information about vitamins, recommended daily allowances, natural sources or deficiency disease, check out some of these resources:
NIH - National Library of Medicine (NLM)
There is alot more to know about vitamins. The subject is well-studied due to the association and impact on human health. Although vitamins are present in many foods, medicines and topical products on the market, not all the vitamin content is easily absorbable by the human body. Vitamins are needed by your body, and the best place to get them remains directly from wholesome, nutritious food!
Tonya
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I can never keep all the B vitamins straight!
- aenima49
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