Fat and Water Soluble Vitamins

Fat- and Water-Soluble Vitamins

Aaron Lee

SCI/241

December 23, 2012

Fat- and Water-Soluble Vitamins

Vitamins are organic components in food that are needed in very small amounts for growth and for maintaining good health. I have learned a lot about vitamins in the last few weeks, and have been both shocked and surprised by how little I do know about it all. Vitamins are important to your body for a lot of reasons that I will go over in this paper but like the definition says they are needed to maintain good health, and in children they help with growing up to be healthy.

Fat-soluble vitamins are A, D, E and K and are stored in fatty tissues and your liver. You don’t need to replace fat-soluble vitamins every day like you do with water-soluble vitamins and can be found in a lot of foods that you might already eat regularly. You can get vitamin A from fortified dairy products, carrots, leafy green vegetables, egg yolk and sweet potatoes. Vitamin D can be found in fortified dairy products, fish oils, and egg yolks and also synthesized by sunlight on your skin. You can get vitamin E from wheat germ, whole grain products and nuts; vitamin K can be obtained from dark green leafy vegetables, liver and is made naturally in your intestine by bacteria.

The functions of these fat-soluble vitamins are all different based on which vitamin; vitamin A promotes healthy bone and tooth development in children, and helps to form skin and mucous membranes and keep them healthy. Vitamin D helps harden bones and teeth and increases the absorption of calcium, Vitamin E protects vitamins A and C and fatty acids, prevents cell damage and is an antioxidant while Vitamin K helps blood to clot.

The obvious benefits of fat-soluble vitamins are to be healthy and strong but not having enough of them can be just as bad. Not having enough of vitamin A can cause mild night blindness, diarrhea, and intestinal infections and in severe cases blindness in children. Without enough vitamin D...