Years ago vitamins were thought of only as nutrients needed in small amounts to prevent deficiency diseases with exotic­ sounding names like beri-beri, pellagra, scurvy, and rickets. So nutri­tional guidelines for vitamins were based on the amount needed to avoid these diseases.

Vitamins are carbon-containing compounds that are essential in small quantities for normal functioning of the body. In plainer English, vita­mins are a type of nutrient our body cannot make and must get from food. Vitamins are usually classified as either fat-soluble or water-soluble.

On a list of the biggest nutritional buzzwords from the last decade, antioxidant would be near the top. Before 1990, this pack of electron-donating compounds was of interest mostly to chemists and food researchers. Today they are touted in books with titles like The Antioxidant Miracle: Your Complete Guide to Total Health and Healing.

A key lesson in virtually every high school biology course covers the role that vi­tamin A plays in vision – transforming light that hits the eye’s retina into elec­trical impulses the brain interprets as images. That’s certainly an interesting and important part of this vitamin’s activity, but it accounts for less than one per­cent of our body’s vitamin A.

We pay top dollar to insure our home and our car. A far cheaper and more personally gratifying kind of life insurance comes from a daily multivitamin. Research is pointing ever more strongly to the fact that several ingredients in a standard multivitamin – especially vitamins B6 and B12, folic acid, and vitamin D – are essential players in preventing heart disease, cancer...