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Vitamins and minerals. You often know them because you’ve been hearing since elementary school how important they are for health. And you probably know them from the many vegetables and fruits you’ve had to eat. In this article, we want to delve a little deeper into vitamins and minerals and the difference between them. Additionally, we want to outline the history and also discuss which food products contain which vitamins and minerals.
History of Vitamins and Minerals
Sometime in the previous century, it was discovered that some substances containing nitrogen are essential and can prevent certain diseases. This was discovered by the
biochemist Casimir Funk, who originally came from Poland. Casimir Funk called the substances he had discovered vitamins. This word comes from Latin, which is a combination of the word
“vita” meaning “life” and
“amine” which means that it is a nitrogen-containing substance. Much later it became known that not all vitamins contain nitrogen, but the name coined by Funk was retained.
What are Vitamins
So, Casimir Funk’s discovery were chemical compounds that can have a
healthy role for humans. Vitamins help with several bodily processes such as
growth and recovery. We do not produce them ourselves or produce them in insufficient quantities, so we mainly need to obtain them from our daily diet or from supplements.
Vitamins are generally divided into 2 groups:
Soluble in fat
Soluble in water
We know 13 vitamins: A, C, D, E, K, and eight B vitamins.
In addition to natural vitamins, there are also
synthetic vitamins. The effect of synthetic vitamins is not the same as that of the natural variant, as the natural vitamin is better recognized by the body.
Another name for vitamins is
essential micronutrients. This is because they need to be taken daily with food to maintain optimal growth, development, and health.
What are Minerals
Minerals, like vitamins, belong to the
essential nutrients, which means that the body cannot do without these substances. The body does not produce them, so they must be obtained through diet.
Of course, there are also other forms of minerals, such as
stones and metals that you often encounter in nature, but the minerals we mean in this article are not found in caves but in food. Most minerals are found in small amounts in your diet, but you don’t need a lot of them. Often these are just a few grams per day. If the body needs minerals in very small amounts, we use the term
trace elements. The group of essential nutrients includes chromium, fluoride, iodine, manganese, iron, copper, selenium, silicon, boron, vanadium, molybdenum, and zinc.
Difference between Vitamins and Minerals
Now that you know what vitamins and minerals are, it’s time to explain the differences. In essence, they are not very large. The main similarity between the two is that they are both of great importance to humans. Vitamins often come from plants or animals, so often living organisms. And minerals are extracted from dead organisms.
