Eli5: [ELI5] What qualifies a chemical or mineral as a “vitamin?” Are all vitamins good for you in proper dosages?
In: Biology
The word was originally “vitamine” in 1920 mean to refer to chemicals thought to contain amino acids necessary for the function of living organisms. This was changed to “vitamin” when we learned that amino acids were not necessarily a component of these substances.
Generally, a vitamin has the following properties:
* It is an organic molecule (That is a molecule built around the element carbon with carbon-hydrogen bonds)
* It is an essential nutrient (It plays a part in the biochemical processes that keep your body alive and help sustain it and allow it to grow and function)
In contrast we have things like fatty acids, minerals, and amino acids. Both fatty acids and amino acids are organic compounds, but have some more additional requirements above being merely an organic compounds and minerals are basically “everything else”.
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