We have vitamin b6 and b12 but I’ve never seen others. I’ve seen vitamin A but never a number with it. How did we get here? Similarly, why aren’t other often grouped supplement ingredients labeled as vitamins? Thinking of Omegas, fish oil, niacin etc. did we run out of letters? Is there a characteristic needed to be called vitamin?
In: Other
Since the rest of your questions have been answered, I’ll explain just the weird naming/numbering of the vitamins. In short, vitamins were discovered and named in the early 1900s. At that time, they were named vitamin A, B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J and K.
With more research and better techniques, a bunch of these vitamins were discovered not to be real things (or not important). Others (most notably vitamin B) were discovered to be not a single chemical, but a family of related chemicals.
Latest Answers