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News & Views: Vitamins And Humans
Posted on February 24, 2014 by Stephanie Tammen | Categories: MD Lesson1-5, MD Lesson1-6, MD Unit1, Metabolic Disease, News | | Add comment |

vitamins (1)

Vitamins are essential nutrients that are required for the function of several proteins in our body. If we become deficient in one or more vitamin entire cellular processes will shut down, leading to sometimes deadly diseases like scurvy, beriberi and pellagra. The body has developed intricate systems to ensure that vitamins are absorbed and stored correctly, preventing deficiency if we go too long without eating our fruits and vegetables. While vitamin storage is helpful, have you ever stopped to think about why the human body requires consumption of specific nutrients in the first place? After all, several other mammals can make many of the vitamins that we must eat. At some point in human evolution the genes that are needed to synthesize vitamins have been silenced or lost. A report from The New York Times looks at this relationship between human evolution and food consumption.