Why are vitamin pills not a replacement for a balanced diet?
In: Biology
The word “vitamin” comes from “vita-” (“life”) and “min” (“little”). It was coined to describe chemicals discovered by scientists that humans need in order to live, even though we don’t need a large quantity of it.
There are many other substances we need in much larger quantities to survive, called “[macronutrients](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient#Macronutrients)”. We get those from food. They are mainly carbohydrates (“sugars”), proteins (which our digestive system breaks down into the amino acids we need), and fat. We also need a decent amount of water even though it doesn’t technically provide nutritional content.
You could make a “vitamin” pill that also contained all the macronutrients we needed, but it would be a hell of a lot bigger than a little pill you could swallow. We make this stuff in a number of forms. It’s essentially what people on liquid diets surive on.
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