Vitamins and minerals are part of our daily lives. But how much do we
really know about them? This article will give you a brief introduction
to some, a re-acquaintance to others.
It is best to obtain your vitamins and minerals, aka micronutrients,
from whole, organic foods. This may not give us all that we need
though, and supplementation is often required.
Vitamins are referred to as either fat or water soluble. The difference
in them is dependent on what solution they dissolve in, i.e. fats/oils,
or water.
Fat soluble vitamins are stored in the body, so build up and therefore
toxicity can occur. These are vitamins A, D, E, F, & K.
The water soluble vitamins, on the other hand, are not stored in the
body. They are made of the B-group, C, & P, and are lost through
perspiration as well as urination. It is necessary to maintain a daily
intake of these vitamins in order to avoid deficiencies in them.
We are used to the RDA as our way of figuring out what we need of each
vitamin on a daily basis. This stands for the Recommended Daily
Allowance, and has been in use since the 1940's. It is a standard
dependent on only estimations, and assumes that we know all there is to
know about micronutrients. These differ from country to country, and
are the minimum requirements to avoid deficiency.
The somewhat outdated views of this system was proposed to be replaced
in 1993. Some refer to it as "The New Paradigm'. This system is called
the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI). Within this are the Adequate
Intake Levels (AI), the Estimated Average Requirements (EAR), the
Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), and the Tolerable Upper Intake
Levels (UI). You can learn more about these in further detail by
following the link...
