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An essential nutrient is a nutrient required for normal body functioning that cannot be synthesized by the body and must be obtained from a dietary source. Some categories of essential nutrients include vitamins, dietary minerals, essential fatty acids, and essential amino acids.

Different species have very different essential nutrients. For example, most mammals synthesize their own ascorbic acid, and it is therefore not considered an essential nutrient for such species. It is, however, an essential nutrient for human beings, who require external sources of ascorbic acid (known as Vitamin C in the context of nutrition).

Many essential nutrients are toxic in large doses (see hypervitaminosis or the nutrient pages themselves below). Some can be taken in amounts larger than required in a typical diet, with no apparent ill effects. Linus Pauling said of vitamin B3, (either niacin or niacinamide), "What astonished me was the very low toxicity of a substance that has such very great physiological power. A little pinch, 5 mg, every day, is enough to keep a person from dying of pellagra, but it is so lacking in toxicity that ten thousand times as much can [sometimes] be taken without harm." 1 A similar statement can be made about vitamin C and some other vitamins.

Contents

List of essential nutrients

See also: dietary minerals

The body's requirements vary widely. At one extreme a 70 kg human contains 1.0 kg of calcium but only 3 mg of cobalt.10

Elements with speculated role in human health

Many elements have been implicated at various times to have a role in human health. For none of these elements has a specific protein or complex been identified:

References

  1. ^ Pauling, L. (1986). How to Live Longer and Feel Better. New York NY 10019: Avon Books Inc.. ISBN 0-380-70289-4.  Page 24.
  2. ^ R. Bruce Martin “Metal Ion Toxicity” in Encyclopedia of Inorganic Chemistry, Robert H. Crabtree (Ed), John Wiley & Sons, 2006. DOI: 10.1002/0470862106.ia136
  3. ^ Hausman, p. 467
  4. ^ Hausman, p. 469
  5. ^ a b c Mertz, W. 1974. The newer essential trace elements, chromium, tin, vanadium, nickel and silicon. Proc. Nutr. Soc. 33 p. 307.
  6. ^ Hausman, p. 470
  7. ^ Hausman, p. 432
  8. ^ Nelson, D. L.; Cox, M. M. "Lehninger, Principles of Biochemistry" 3rd Ed. Worth Publishing: New York, 2000. ISBN 1-57259-153-6.
  9. ^ Hausman, p. 395
  10. ^ Elemental Composition of the Body

Further reading

See also
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