Vitamins A, B, C, D, E — What About Vitamin F?
Have you ever wondered what happened to vitamin F? We have vitamins A through E, and vitamin K, but vitamin F seems long forgotten. Getting to the bottom of the mystery requires digging into the history of vitamins, including how they came to be and the strategies used in naming them. While it’s easy to take the knowledge of water- and fat-soluble vitamins for granted, it wasn’t until 1912 that the idea of vitamins came to be, setting the stage for more in-depth studies into these important nutritional compounds. Nutrition Discoveries Came Before Vitamins Humans have long had intrinsic knowledge that the foods they eat are tied to their health. In 1772, the discovery of nitrogen led to experiments on the element in food, followed by the discovery of an “animal substance” called protein in 1839. National Geographic reported: 1 “For decades, historian Kenneth Carpenter writes, protein was considered the sole nutrient for human health despite emerging knowledge tha...