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TEACHING FACT SHEET
Vitamin
Vitamin A
Example of Source
Function
Carrots and other vegetables, dairy
Good for skin, bones and
products, liver and fish-liver oil
vision
Helps growth.
Vitamin B1
Sunflower seeds, oats, whole wheat
Good for muscles and
bread and pasta, brown rice, berries,
heart
nuts.
Vitamin B2
Vitamin B3
Vitamin B5
Whole wheat bread and pasta, dairy
Good for skin hair and
products, meat, dark green vegetables,
nails. Helps form red
enriched cereals and mushrooms
blood cells
Meat, canned tuna and salmon, whole
Increases energy. Good
grain and enriched cereals, dried beans
for skin and digestive
and peas, and nuts
system
Eggs, sunflower seeds, poultry, fish,
Good for white blood cells
liver, milk, peas, peanuts, peanut butter,
legumes, broccoli, bananas, oranges,
mushrooms, whole grain products and
wheat germ
Vitamin B6
Whole wheat bread and pasta, cereals,
liver, avocados, spinach, and bananas.
Vitamin B7
Tomatoes, carrots, eggs, onions,
Helps form red blood cells
Promotes healthy skin
Promotes healthy skin
cabbage, cucumber, cauliflower, milk,
raspberries, strawberries, oats and
walnuts
Vitamin B12 Liver, kidneys, meat, fish, eggs, and
milk
Promotes growth in
children
Good for red blood cells
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B9 vitamin
Liver, green vegetables, nuts, whole
Promotes growth
wheat bread and pasta.
Vitamin C
Citrus fruits, strawberries, pineapple,
Helps body resist
broccoli, tomatoes, spinach, cabbage and infections
turnips
Prevents scurvy
Helps to heal wounds
Good for teeth, gums and
bones
Vitamin D
Egg yolk, liver, tuna, fortified milk, and
Good for bones
sunshine
Vitamin E
Vitamin K
Vegetable oils, wheat germ, liver, and
Helps form red blood
green vegetables
cells, muscles, and tissues
Fish livers, green vegetables and liver
Helps blood to clot
Additional background material
There are three story/explanations of how scientists discovered that diet was
important for preventing diseases. Use as appropriate
Night blindness and Vitamin A
Night blindness is not being able to see in dim light.
The Ancient Egyptians knew that feeding a patient liver would help cure night
blindness.
The value of eating a certain food to maintain health was recognized long before
vitamins were identified. The ancient Egyptians knew that feeding liver to a patient
would help cure night blindness, an illness now known to be caused by a vitamin A
deficiency.
Rickets and Vitamin D
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Rickets is a softening of bones in children potentially leading to fractures and
deformity. Rickets is among the most frequent childhood diseases in many developing
countries. The predominant cause is a vitamin D deficiency, but lack of adequate
calcium in the diet may also lead to rickets.
At the dawn of the industrial age, in the late 1700's, many families in Europe and
America left the rural farm life to work in the factories of the smoky, smoggy, sunless
industrial cities. By the early 1800's rickets had become very common throughout
northern Europe and the US. In 1822 a doctor in Warsaw observed that while rickets
was very widespread within the city, it was nearly unheard of in the outlying rural
areas. After experimenting with the two groups of children, and seeing some miraculous
recoveries, he came to the conclusion that sun-bathing cured rickets. A few years
later, a French physician noted that a home remedy, cod liver oil, apparently cured
these unfortunate children. Throughout the remainder of the century, various
researchers made similar observations. But in those days of limited communication,
information was very slow to spread. In addition, the predominant belief was that
people only needed adequate amounts of protein, carbohydrates and fats to maintain
health. As a consequence, even doctors who were exposed to the information, often
chose to disregard it.
As the 20th century approached, more and more scientists became interested in
researching the relationship between food and health.
It wasn't until the mid 1960's that new technology allowed researchers to finally start
unraveling the mystery surrounding "how". They began to understand the way the body
processed vitamin D and how it helps calcium to be absorbed into the bones. Perhaps,
just as important, they discovered vitamin D plays a role in other important body
processes.
Ongoing medical research suggests that vitamin D deficiency may play a role in heart
disease, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, diabetes, osteoarthritis, depression, stroke,
multiple sclerosis, and up to seventeen varieties of cancer. Vitamin D has been
successfully used in the treatment of psoriasis for more than 10 years.
This does not intend to say that vitamin D deficiency is the only cause of these
conditions, or that if you take extra vitamin D, you will not be troubled with these
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illnesses. Most disease processes are a complex combination of many factors. What
this does mean, is that vitamin D should not be overlooked as an important nutrient in a
person's over all health and well being.
Beriberi and Vitamin B1 – the following is background……
General symptoms of beriberi include loss of appetite and overall lassitude, digestive
irregularities, and a feeling of numbness and weakness in the limbs and extremities.
In east Asia, where polished white rice was the common staple food of the middle class,
beriberi resulting from lack of vitamin B1 was endemic. In 1884, Takaki Kanehiro, a
British trained medical doctor of the Japanese Navy, observed that beriberi was
endemic among low-ranking crew who often ate nothing but rice, but not among crews
of Western navies and officers who consumed a Western-style diet. Kanehiro initially
believed that lack of protein was the chief cause of beriberi. With the support of the
Japanese navy, he experimented using crews of two battleships; one crew was fed only
white rice, while the other was fed a diet of meat, fish, barley, rice, and beans. The
group that ate only white rice documented 161 crew members with beriberi and 25
deaths, while the latter group had only 14 cases of beriberi and no deaths. This
convinced Kanehiro and the Japanese Navy that diet was the cause of beriberi. This
was confirmed in 1897, when Christiaan Eijkman discovered that feeding unpolished
rice instead of the polished variety to chickens helped to prevent beriberi in the
chickens. The following year, Frederick Hopkins postulated that some foods contained
"accessory factors"—in addition to proteins, carbohydrates, fats, et cetera—that were
necessary for the functions of the human body.[8] Hopkins was awarded the 1929
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Christiaan Eijkman for their discovery of
several vitamins.
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