Salt isn’t regularly considered a spice, nor is it discussed as a vitamin like A, B, etc. But isn’t it necessary in small amounts for humans?
In: 402
It’s all for historic reasons.
Vitamines (Note the extra e) where what the first essential organic nutrients humankind discovered were called, because they initially thought they’d all have a chemical structure called an amine. Which they don’t all, so the E was dropped, but Vitamin had already been established.
So a vitamin is any organic molecule that a species has to take in with their diet. This varies between species, because after all being organic, some animal or plant or bacterium has to make them.
So vitamin c or Ascorbic acid is a vitamin in humans, but not in most other mammals who still have the gene that make the enzyme that converts glucose to Ascorbic acid/vitamin C.
So any organic molecule that is required in trace amounts in the diet, which cannot be made from other dietary components is called a vitamin.
But those are the only essential ingredients of a diet.
Various amino acids (the individual building blocks of protein) as well as fatty acids (building blocks of animal/vegetable fata and oil) are also essential. They cannot be made in our own body from say other amino acids or fats.
Carbohydrates/sugar is actually not directly essential because our bodies can break apart amino acids to create glucose molecules from them.
This is however not exactly healthy long term, but can be done.
And then you get the inorganic parts of a diet: stuff like the electrolytes you mentioned. Sodium ans chloride are essential in virtually every living thing.
But these inorganic compounds are considered minerals in nutrition.
And they are all by definition essential. Because you can convert sodium to potassium without a nuclear breeder reactor, because they are just atoms after all.
Of those minerals there are various that get used as electrolytes, like sodium, potassium, chloride.
But there’s also various metals that are absolutely essential for us, iron being a popularly known one, but zinc, copper, molybdenum, cobalt and even selenium are essential. That’s why they are listed in infant milk for example or liquid complete foods for cancer patients.
In any normal circumstances it would be extremely hard to become deficient in most of those, because they are present in most things we eat.
And then the weirdest part: vitamin B12 is a molecule that complains of organic parts surrounding a cobalt atom. So animals that produce their ‘own’ vitamin B12 (the bacteria in their gut produce it, they just are able to absorb it, humans large intestine is too small to absorb enough b12 from our bacteria) can still become deficient in vitamin B12 if the area they live in, the grass they eat is extremely poor in cobalt.
Tkdr; vitamins are just a subgroup of molecules of all the stuff essential to human life. They are those molecules that other bacteria, plants, or animals can themselves produce, and that we obtain in our diet by eating them. Some vitamins are only vitamins for humans, and some other substances like say taurine are vitamins for other animals but not humans. Because which vitamins a living being produces varies by species.
Latest Answers