Supplements

When it comes to nutrition, vitamins take a front and center role. In nutrition, we study all the nutrients and substances that are in food. A nutritionist or someone who has studied nutrition looks at food compounds and how it links to diseases and health. It also looks at how food compounds interact in ingestion, absorption, utilization, and excretion.

The six essential nutrients that are important to maintain our body and our health are: vitamins, minerals, water, fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. These nutrients are important for us to sustain life and are received through what we eat; they can’t be made.

Currently, the medical community knows of 14 vitamins that humans need. Vitamins were discovered in the 1800s and they are the organic compounds that are in the foods we eat. Because they are organic, they are able to be obliterated by heat; this is different from other materials that aren’t destroyed with heat.

About 100 years ago, scientists were still finding out about new vitamins. They named them with letters from the alphabet; A, B, C, D, E and K. There were vitamins that had the letters F, G, H, I, J, but they did not fit the requirements for a vitamin. They weren’t needed to sustain life.

Vitamins can be separated into two areas. They are fat soluble or water soluble. Vitamin B and C are water soluble. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat soluble. The foods that each vitamin are contained in will determine if a vitamin is fat or water soluble. A food that has no fate won’t have fat soluble vitamins. The vegetables that have bright colors contain beta-carotene and it is converted to Vitamin A.

A vitamin that is water soluble can be shed by our bodies quickly and can be lost when a food is cooked. These vitamins aren’t stored inside the body and need to be eaten each day. There is no reason to take vitamins or eat large versions of the same vitamin rich foods. But, you can store vitamins that are fat soluble. You can develop toxic levels of fat soluble vitamins so you should eat normal, balanced meals.

Many people want to know if they need to use vitamin supplements and which ones they should use. Today, our food is processed more than ever and the soil our food is produced in has been depleted of it’s minerals. It might be more important than ever that we add a supplement to our diet. There are too many things that we put in our bodies that aren’t natural and we don’t need.

What you should do is make a food log. Write down what you eat and how much you eat. Get a book that shows all the vitamins in the foods you have eaten. Determine what the daily allowance is for that vitamin and see if it is a good idea to take vitamin supplements.