50 Fun Facts About Vitamin

How many vitamins do major health organizations recognise as essential for humans?

Four are fat-soluble (A, D, E, K) and nine dissolve in water: vitamin C plus the eight B vitamins.

Which four vitamins are fat-soluble?

Because they can be stored in body fat and the liver, vitamins A and D can build up to dangerous levels, unlike the water-soluble ones that are quickly excreted.

Who coined the word 'vitamine' in 1912?

The Polish-born biochemist was working at London's Lister Institute; his friend Max Nierenstein suggested fusing 'vital' and 'amine'.

Why was the final 'e' dropped from 'vitamine' in 1920?

Jack Cecil Drummond proposed the change once researchers suspected vitamin A, in particular, contained no amine group at all.

Scurvy is caused by a deficiency of which nutrient?

Without it the body cannot form collagen properly, so wounds fail to heal and gums bleed.

Which Scottish naval surgeon ran a 1747 trial showing citrus fruit prevented scurvy?

His experiment aboard HMS Salisbury, comparing cider, vinegar, seawater and oranges on twelve sick sailors, is often called the first controlled clinical trial.

The Royal Navy's adoption of citrus juice against scurvy gave British sailors which nickname?

The switch from Mediterranean lemons to West Indian limes in the 19th century backfired: limes carry far less vitamin C, and Arctic expeditions kept getting scurvy.

Aboard which ship was the famous 1747 citrus-and-scurvy experiment carried out?

The trial began on 20 May 1747 while the ship patrolled the Bay of Biscay; Lind published his Treatise on the Scurvy six years later.

Which British circumnavigator lost nearly two-thirds of his 2,000 men, mainly to scurvy, in the 1740s?

About 1,300 died within the first ten months; James Lind later dedicated his Treatise on the Scurvy to him.

Which fermented food carried on James Cook's Endeavour voyage was a good source of vitamin C?

Cook lost not one man to scurvy, though he credited malt and wort; cleanliness and constant fresh provisions were the real reason.

Which disease of polished-white-rice diets is caused by a lack of thiamine?

Its name may come from a Sinhalese phrase meaning 'I cannot, I cannot', describing the weakness it brings.

The name of the thiamine-deficiency disease is thought to mean 'I cannot, I cannot' in which language?

Wet beriberi attacks the heart and circulation; dry beriberi attacks the nerves.

Takaki Kanehiro's 1884 experiment feeding two battleship crews different diets was for which navy?

The rice-only crew logged 161 cases and 25 deaths; the crew fed meat, fish, barley and beans had 14 cases and no deaths.

Christiaan Eijkman's Nobel-winning 1897 work on polished versus unpolished rice used which animals?

He shared the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Frederick Hopkins, who had proposed that foods contained 'accessory factors'.

Which Japanese scientist isolated the first vitamin complex from rice bran in 1910 but was overlooked?

He named it aberic acid, later Orizanin; the translation omitted his claim that it was a newly discovered nutrient.

Why does the vitamin alphabet skip from E to K?

Many of the dropped letters turned out to be members of the B complex or false leads.

The 'K' in vitamin K comes from a word in which language?

Henrik Dam's Danish-speaking team named it for its role in blood clotting; Dam shared the 1943 Nobel Prize with Edward Doisy.

Newborn babies are routinely given an injection of what to prevent dangerous bleeding?

Infants are born with clotting factors at only 30-60% of adult levels because the vitamin crosses the placenta poorly.

Patients on the anticoagulant warfarin are told to keep their intake of what consistent?

Foods like collard greens and spinach are so rich in it that some patients are told to avoid them entirely.

What does human skin manufacture when exposed to ultraviolet light?

Sunlight converts 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin into vitamin D3; the liver and kidneys then activate it.

Cod liver oil, once marketed as 'bottled sunshine', is a rich source of what?

Northern European parents dosed children a teaspoon a day well into the 1950s to ward off rickets.

Which childhood bone disease, marked by bowed legs, results from a lack of vitamin D?

It plagued smog-choked London during the Industrial Revolution and is still called 'the English disease' in some languages.

Which organ performs the final step that turns vitamin D into its active form, calcitriol?

The liver first makes calcifediol; the kidneys hydroxylate it again, which is why kidney disease often brings vitamin D deficiency.

Calcitriol is the active form of what?

Calcitriol works like a hormone, binding nuclear receptors that switch on calcium-transport genes in the gut.

Ancient Egyptians treated night blindness by feeding patients which food?

Night blindness is an early sign of vitamin A deficiency, and animal liver is packed with stored retinol.

Eating the liver of which Arctic animal can cause acute vitamin A poisoning?

Its liver has been measured at up to 10,400 micrograms of retinol per gram, thousands of times a safe daily dose.

Eating large amounts of carrots for weeks can turn skin orange, a harmless condition called what?

Beta-carotene is a vitamin A precursor; the body simply stops converting it once retinol stores are full, so the excess tints the skin.

'Golden Rice' was genetically engineered to produce which vitamin precursor?

The Philippines became the first country to issue a biosafety permit for growing it commercially in July 2021.

Which essential nutrient is the only one that cannot be obtained from plant foods?

It is made only by certain bacteria and archaea, which is why strict vegans are advised to supplement.

Which metal sits at the centre of the vitamin B12 molecule?

Its chemical name, cobalamin, gives the game away; it is the most structurally complex vitamin known.

Who determined vitamin B12's structure by X-ray crystallography, winning the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

She went on to solve the structure of insulin as well.

Whipple, Minot and Murphy won the 1934 Nobel for treating pernicious anaemia with which food?

The extract was later found to be loaded with vitamin B12; loss of stomach 'intrinsic factor' is the usual cause of the disease.

Pellagra, the disease of the 'four Ds', is caused by a deficiency of which vitamin?

The four Ds are diarrhoea, dermatitis, dementia and death; the disease followed maize wherever it was eaten without alkali treatment.

Which traditional alkali treatment of maize frees up vitamin B3 and prevents pellagra?

Maize spread worldwide without the technique, and pellagra followed in its wake.

Which US public-health doctor showed pellagra was dietary by studying outbreaks in orphanages and asylums?

He noticed children aged 6 to 12 and patients, but never staff, got sick, and later induced the disease in prisoner volunteers with a corn-heavy diet.

In 1942 nicotinic acid was given a new name partly to stop people associating fortified bread with what?

A press headline had read 'Tobacco in Your Bread'; the new name blends nicotinic acid with vitamin.

Excess of which vitamin famously turns urine bright yellow?

It is also a licensed food colouring, E101, and gets its name from the Latin for yellow.

Avidin, a protein in raw egg whites, blocks absorption of which vitamin?

Cooking deactivates avidin; 1920s rats fed only raw egg white lost their hair and developed 'egg-white injury'.

The B vitamin once labelled 'vitamin H' took the letter from the German words for which two things?

Paul Gyorgy named it in 1939 for Haar und Haut, the tissues that suffered in egg-white injury.

The word 'folic' in folic acid comes from the Latin word for what?

Folate was first found in dark-green leafy vegetables; more than 80 countries now fortify foods with it.

Folic acid supplements in pregnancy reduce the risk of which kind of birth abnormality?

Spina bifida and anencephaly are the best-known examples; mandatory flour fortification cut spina bifida births by about 30%.

'Tocopherol', the chemical name of vitamin E, comes from Greek words meaning what?

It was discovered in 1922 as a factor rats needed to carry pregnancies to term.

Which Hungarian biochemist won the 1937 Nobel Prize for work on vitamin C?

He had first called the substance 'hexuronic acid' after isolating it from adrenal glands.

Vitamin C became the first vitamin to be chemically produced in which year?

Discovery, isolation and synthesis spanned just 21 years, and cheap synthetic ascorbic acid soon followed.

Which of these animals, like humans, cannot make its own vitamin C?

Guinea pigs, capybaras, most bats and higher primates all carry a broken gene for the last enzyme in the pathway.

Which double Nobel laureate popularised megadoses of vitamin C against the common cold in 1970?

Regular doses above 200 mg a day have not been shown to prevent colds, though they may slightly shorten them.

Between which years were all the vitamins discovered?

Commercial vitamin tablets appeared from 1935 and mass-marketed multivitamins in the 1950s.

Which organ stores the bulk of vitamins A, D and B12, so deficiencies can take months or years to appear?

Niacin, by contrast, is barely stored at all and can run out within a couple of weeks.

Which Swiss chemist worked out the correct structure of beta-carotene in 1930?

Karrer and Norman Haworth shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B2.

The body can make niacin from which amino acid it consumes?

Gut microbes also produce vitamin K and biotin, and vitamin A is synthesised from beta carotene, so not every vitamin has to arrive ready-made in food.