eli5: If vitamins are things considered essential to human life, why is salt not considered a vitamin?

Question

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

Answer 1

Essential nutrients include “vitamins and minerals”, salt is a mineral. Basically, a non-organic nutrient, in this case a source of both sodium and chloride, both of which are needed for various biological processes.

Vitamins are organic molecules (contain carbon). More specifically, they are amines, so organic molecules that also contain nitrogen (“vitamin” is short for “vital amine”). So if you look up the structure for a vitamin, you’ll see they contain a carbon structure and usually a nitrogen somewhere in there.

Table salt (NaCl) doesn’t contain carbon or nitrogen, so by definition it’s not a vitamin.