Christina Faithful
Editorial office Frummi
Christina Faithful has been writing for since May 2019 Frummi . She is ambitious to always check the best sources and to write the most qualified texts for our customers.
Vitamin A: Origin & Interesting Facts
Interesting facts about vitamin A
Vitamin A belongs to the group of fat-soluble vitamins and describes a variety of chemical compounds that are either obtained directly from food or are produced indirectly from carotenes when the body converts them into vitamin A as needed. In relation to the human organism, many often equate vitamin A with retinol, although both substances are only classified in the same group.
Vitamin A is one of the body's most important suppliers of nutrients and can be used for numerous ailments. It is often also called eye vitamin because it promotes the processing of light stimuli. Especially people who are rarely in the fresh air and do a lot of computer work should therefore pay attention to a balanced vitamin A household.
Vitamin A origin
As early as the 15th century, medical scholars in Far Eastern cultures such as China relied on products rich in vitamin A to treat patients with night blindness. At that time, however, it was not yet known that the active ingredient contained the said vitamin. Rather, the physicians believed in the positive power of the food used. Its effectiveness has been confirmed several times and, from the 20th century onwards, led to the healthcare sector taking a closer look at the connection between diets, i.e. the conscious withdrawal of some nutrients, and an improvement in general condition.
This resulted in the finding that a lack of essential fatty acids promotes long-term growth problems, but this has only been tested in relation to mammals. It was only when Thomas Burr Osborne, Lafayette Benedict Mendel and Elmer McCollum successfully isolated the essential retinol (often referred to as vitamin A) in 1913 that researchers and physicians recognized the actual dependence of the organism on certain vitamins and thus also on the vitamin A
In the course of this, the various vitamins were categorized in 1916 and subsequently in 1920 they were named vitamin A for the first time to use health.
Extraction of vitamin A
Vitamin A is found in countless animal and plant products such as:
- carrots
- mango
- pumpkin
- spinach
or chicken, cod and egg yolk. Some foods only release vitamin A after cooking, others already contain it in the raw state.
| By Christina Treu – updated 10 Feb 2022 |