View all slides | Contents of this slide

Lecture Notes

Alright, so we're moving on to the micronutrients now, and here you see the first two micronutrients—vitamins and minerals. And vitamins are essential organic substances needed by the body to perform highly specific metabolic processes in the cells.

There are two different types here—water soluble and fat soluble. The water soluble vitamins dissolve in water, like the name suggests. They can be excreted by the body if you consume too many, which just essentially means you pee it out.

The fat soluble vitamins must be stored in the fat within your body to be transported throughout the body. And high levels of these vitamins, usually that occur through supplementation, can be toxic because they're not excreted like water soluble variables.

The best way to get both of these types of variables is to eat a balanced diet. Most people (there are some cases where vitamin supplementation is important and good), but the best way to really make sure that you're getting all the vitamins and the minerals that you need is to eat a balanced diet.

And so some examples of roles that vitamins play in the body are folic acid, for example, helps with the synthesis of DNA and other molecules, thiamine, which is a B vitamin, helps with the breakdown of food molecules, and vitamin K helps with blood clotting, so there are many, many other examples. You're not responsible for knowing exactly what each vitamin does, but you are responsible for knowing the different types of vitamins within your body—the water soluble and the fat soluble.

Minerals are essential inorganic substances that are vital to, again, many of your bodily functions. So, some examples of minerals in your body would be calcium (which obviously helps with the formation of bones and teeth), iron, sodium (which helps with your water balance in your body and your nerve function). So these, again, are just a few examples of the important roles of vitamins and minerals in our body.