Essential to life, these thirteen organic compounds perform dozens of vital jobs in the body. Vitamin entered our vocabulary only in 1912, when the first one thiamin or B1 was isolated. We now know that some of the devastating diseases of the past beriberi, rickets, scurvy were nothing more than acute vitamin deficiencies. To prevent future deficiencies, the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences devised Recommended Dietary Allowances, the daily amounts of the different food nutrients considered adequate for healthy individuals. These figures are updated every five to ten years, the last update being 1989. But if you clicked on the link to recommended dietary allowances, you read that the definition is far from adequate in determining individual needs.

The "book" on vitamins is far from complete. Research continues and few scientists doubt that new vitamins, even new roles for existing vitamins, will surface. There are 13 vitamins now known: vitamin A, vitamin B1, vitamin B2 (riboflavin), niacin, vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), vitamin B12 (cobalamin), folic acid, pantothenic acid, biotin, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin K. For a detailed description of all of the vitamins, go here.

Do They Really Work?

Vitamins-they captivate, and they cure. Or so people say.

Few newspaper headlines grab a person's attention faster than those describing the often "miraculous" benefits of vitamins. Are they as good as they've been cracked up to be?

The answer, in a nutshell, is yes. Each year, now, thousands of medical journal articles report new findings related to vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. But it's also easy to become overwhelmed and confused by all the information. What follows are answers to some basic questions about vitamins and other supplements.

Why should a person take vitamin supplements?

There are a number of reasons. Despite official proclamations that Americans have the best food supply in the world, (we actually have the largest not the best) large number of people don't obtain sufficient amounts of essential nutrients.

One reason is most people simply don't select very nutritious foods. For example, do you eat the five officially recommended daily servings of fruit and vegetables? According to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, only an estimated 9 percent of people do.

Another reason relates to extensive food handling and processing that reduces vitamin levels from the farm to the fork. Several years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers found that conventional nitrogen fertilizer reduced vitamin C levels in some food crops by as much as one-third. Further nutrient losses have been documented during the transportation, storage, and processing of produce and during repeated heating and cooling. So even if your intentions are good, you won't walk out of a supermarket with nutritious foods. Furthermore, processed foods (those foods whose vitamins and minerals are removed for manufacturing purposes), remove the majority of minerals and minerals that we need for good health. The Rutger's Study confirms this.

Nutritional surveys have found that 50 percent of Americans consume less than 50 mg. and 25 percent consume less than 39 mg. of vitamin C daily-far below the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of 60 mg. Furthermore, studies have found that half of the population consumes only 950 IU of vitamin A (19 percent of the RDA), and 4 IU of vitamin E (40 percent of the RDA) or less daily. The same pattern applies to the consumption of other micronutrients as well, meaning that large numbers of people are malnourished.