Micronutrients: You Need Just A Little But They Do Great Things

The name “vitamin” has a very good reputation. ‘Get plenty of vitamins’ is something that definitely sounds healthy. Most people associate the idea with fresh fruits and vegetables, and indeed these food contain a lot of vitamins, but not all of them. Some other vitamins are more abundant in whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, some other are more abundant or even only found in animal foods.

For other people, getting vitamins means popping in a daily pill. We will also discuss the use of vitamin and mineral supplements later in this section. Meeting your requirements for vitamins and minerals is really of the utmost importance for your health and well being. The study of vitamins and minerals in a basic nutrition course like this one, is inevitably concise, as each of these molecules would deserve a whole textbook on its own, and an appropriate discussion requires a more in-depth knowledge of chemistry, biochemistry, and physiopathology.

When we try to summarize too much something that is very complex, we run the risk of trivializing, or worse, making it boring by means of tedious lists of physiological functions, requirements, deficiency and toxicity symptoms, and food sources. In the next few videos I will try to provide a general overview of these extraordinary molecules, and I’ll do my best to keep it interesting. I hope you’ll be able to appreciate how important they are, how beneficial it is to meet our needs for each and every one of them, and how our health and well being can be severely impaired if just one of them is deficient. I also hope you will be motivated to expand your knowledge of the vitamins and minerals with more advanced nutrition studies.

So what exactly is a vitamin? Defining what a vitamin is is actually very tricky, and I myself sometime wonder if we should just get rid of the name vitamins once and for all, and just refer to each compound individually and not as part of a category. Let’s just say that vitamins are vital organic nutrients – remember that organic means that they contain carbon -, they do not provide energy (or anyway not in significant amounts), but are needed in small amounts to perform key structural or regulatory functions in our body. There are many other bioactive compounds present in food that perform health-promoting functions in our body, such as polyphenols, carotenoids, or isothiocianates. They are also organic and eaten in small amounts.

However, they are not classified as vitamins because they are not strictly necessary to sustain life. They help us and promote our health if we have them, but if we don’t, we can still survive. Instead, if we don’t have all of the vitamins, life cannot be sustained. But a diet poor in polyphenols, you may argue, increases the risk for cancer or heart disease.

Correct. But it doesn’t necessarily cause it, the way a lack of vitamin C causes scurvy. While all vitamins are necessary molecules for our body, not all of them are essential nutrients. For example, vitamin D can be synthesized directly in our body starting from cholesterol, as long as our skin is exposed to adequate sunlight.

Vitamin A is semiessential, because it can be derived from carotenoid precursors found in some fruits and veggies. Niacin is also semi-essential, because it can be derived from the amino acid tryptophan. Finally, vitamin K and some of the group B vitamins can be synthesized by bacteria in our gut, and then be absorbed. The recommended daily intake for vitamins is generally set at the amount needed to prevent deficiencies.

Some vitamins, however, have also proved beneficial in treating specific conditions at much higher doses than the RDA, called megadoses or pharmacological doses. For example, megadoses of niacin have been successfully used to lower blood-cholesterol in some individuals. High doses of vitamin C, when taken at the very first symptoms of a cold, are often able to prevent its progression to a full-blown disease. Vitamins are traditionally classified in two groups depending on their solubility: vitamins A, D, E and K are soluble in fat, vitamin C and all group B vitamins are soluble in water.

One important thing to remember is that fat-soluble vitamins need to be absorbed along with dietary fat. If you snack on a raw carrot away from a meal, since carrots contain no fat, your absorption of its beta-carotene will be very limited. But if you eat the same carrot with some olive oil, then your beta-carotene absorption will greatly increase thanks to the lipids coming from the oil. It is for the same reason that if you take a multivitamin supplement, you should always take it following your larger meal.

Again for the same reason, individuals following extremely low-fat diets are often at risk for fat-soluble vitamins deficiencies, as well as individuals with problems of fat malabsorption, or taking medications that interfere with fat absorption such as the weight-loss drug orlistat. Another important difference between fat-soluble vitamins and water-soluble vitamins is that fat-soluble vitamins tend to accumulate in our tissues, primarily our liver. One one hand, this is an advantage because we can build some stores of these vitamins, that can be used when dietary intake in insufficient, so that we don’t necessarily need to get all of them every day from food. On the other hand, if we get too many of these vitamins, they can cause serious problems of toxicity because they build up in our tissues, so we need to be much more careful when it comes to supplementation.

Conversely, water soluble vitamins cannot be stored for long, so we need to get them daily from food. However, if we get more than we need, we can easily excrete them with the urine without too many risks of toxicity. There are however some exceptions to this general rule: fat-soluble vitamin K is not easily stored, while water-soluble vitamins B6 and B12 are stored much more efficiently than the other water soluble vitamins. Many vitamins are not very stable, and can be destroyed or lost with exposure to heat, light, air, water or high pH.

However, there’s no point in obsessing about vitamin losses with food storage, processing and cooking. Even if something is lost, something is always left, and we should focus on that instead. That being said, there are some measures that we can take to minimize vitamin losses. The biggest problem with water soluble vitamins is that large amounts of them can be lost with food storage and preparation.

The best cooking methods to preserve these vitamins are steaming or microwaving, or not cooking at all. Boiling in water causes some water-soluble vitamins to migrate from food into the water, but if you use that water, for example to make a soup, it’s still fine. Another common mistake is overwashing fruits and vegetables, washing away these vitamins as well. Even worse, some people use baking soda or other disinfectants to clean fruit and vegetables.

It is completely unncecessary and the only thing you accomplish is destroying most vitamins. Remember that most vitamins as well as minerals and other bioactives are usually found in the skin or the outher layer of fruis and vegetables, for example, the potato skin is extremely rich in vitmains and minerals, the carrot outer layer is richest in beta-caroten, and so on. Try not to peel fruits and vegetables. IF you are concerned about pesticide or other agrochemical residues, choose organic products, but remember that in any case, the advantages of getting the fiber, vitamins, minerals and bioactives found in the skin and outer layers of fruits and vegetables far outweighs the risks of the small residues of agrochemicals that may be found in them.

Keep your fresh food refrigerated, or in cool, dark places, and eat it as soon as possible. Do not pre-cut fruits and vegetables and leave them out exposed to air and light. For example, if you squeeze an orange and wait 15 minutes before drinking your orange juice, more than half of its vitamin C will be lost because of exposure to oxygen in the air.

Nature’s Way Sambucus Black Elderberry Gummies with Vitamin C and Zinc, 60 Gummies

Source: NutritionSteps