Vitamins

Vitamins are special tiny helpers in our food that keep us healthy. A long time ago, doctors didn’t know about vitamins. People got sick from not eating the right foods, but no one knew the reason. One particular example was sailors who were at sea for long periods. Eventually, they ate all the fresh fruit and vegetables and, a short time later, many sailors began to get a disease which was called scurvy.

At the end of the 19th century, a Dutch doctor named Christiaan Eijkman found out that a sickness called beriberi happened when people didn’t eat the outside of rice. He found that it contained something important for health. Then, a Polish scientist named Casimir Funk suggested that some sicknesses come from not having certain special things in our food. He called these things “vitamines,” which means “life stuff”, and he is remembered today for this.

Elmer McCollum and Marguerite Davis found the first vitamin, Vitamin A, by studying what happens when it is missing from food. […] Later, in the 1920s, a man named Frederick Hopkins discovered that animals need vitamins to grow strong and healthy. He showed that just eating proteins, carbohydrates, and fats wasn’t enough to maintain health.

Today, we know a lot about vitamins and how they help us. Eating foods with different vitamins keeps our bodies working well and stops us from getting sick. It’s amazing how miniscule things in our food can be so important!