We’re all familiar with vitamin ABCDE, but if you want to take it a step further, the next member of the vitamin family goes straight to vitamin K. The vitamin FGHIJ is the next member of the vitamin family, but the vitamin K is the next member. Where is the middle vitamin FGHIJ in the family?

Let’s start with the name “vitamin”.

The discovery of vitamins was one of the great discoveries of the 19th century.
In 1886, Christian Eijkman (1858-1930) studied beriberi in Java. In 1897, Eijkman experimented with chickens and found that the symptoms of beriberi appeared in chicks when they ate refined rice and disappeared when they were fed brown rice. Eventually, Eckermann determined that there was a substance in brown rice that could cure athlete’s foot. 1912, Casimir Funk finally extracted a white substance from rice bran that could cure athlete’s foot after thousands of trials. This substance, which Funk called “life-sustaining nutrients”, is called Vitamin (Vitamin) for short (without it, there is no life), also known as vitamins.

Vitamins were first written as “Vitamine”, which is the Latin word for life “vita” + amine, roughly meaning the amines needed for life (but not the amines in vitamins). Later, when it was discovered that vitamins contain more than amines, the e was dropped and the name was changed to Vitamin).

You see, when the concept of “vitamin” first appeared, the definition was very broad: amines needed for life, how many substances must qualify?

Vitamin nomenclature

Vitamins made their official debut in 1912, named by Casimir Funk.

However, the discovery of vitamins was accompanied by a naming scheme, and in 1915 it was discovered that the “vitamins” named by Funk essentially consisted of two substances, fat-soluble and water-soluble. These two substances were named Vitamin A and Vitamin B. Later, people thought it was quite smooth, and in order to make it easier to memorize, it was simply arranged according to the alphabet A to Z.

Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E are in accordance with this law obediently appeared, however, to F when it began to make a mess.

The Confusion Begins with Vitamin F

In the 1920s, it was discovered that vitamin B was not a substance, but a group of substances. Scientists quickly identified 2 of them and called them Vitamin F and Vitamin G. However, since both of these substances were separated from Vitamin B, they didn’t fit into a separate pit stop.

In 1927, the Committee on Additional Factors in Foods under the British Medical Research Council directly affirmed the call of vitamin B1 and vitamin B2.

The Vitamin F and Vitamin G designations went unused.
Shortly afterward, Vitamin F was inaugurated by a new member as the name for essential fatty acids. As research expanded and deepened, it was again realized that essential fatty acids are actually constituents of fats, which are not considered vitamins, so essential fatty acids were taken right out of the vitamin category,.

Once again, the name Vitamin F fell into disuse and has never been used in an official context until now.

The Most Confusing Vitamin B Family

The surviving B vitamin family is the AKB48 of the vitamin world, with members coming and going.

After the discovery of vitamin B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6 ……B17 came out one after another, of which B12 and collected B12a, B12b, B12c this 3 little brother; there are people because of the discovery of one of the factors is the chicken need, it is named vitamin Bc (“”). c” is the initial letter of the English word “chicken”).

Nowadays, however, the only B vitamins you know of are probably B2, B6 and B12, and the rest of the B vitamins that have sprung up have disappeared. Much of this is due to the fact that they are actually mixtures of other vitamins, as well as the problem of duplicate naming by different researchers.

Vitamins B10 and B11 are probably in the same class as a mixture of folic acid and B12;
Vitamin B7 and vitamin I also point to the same mixture;
Vitamin Bc was found to be actually folic acid along with vitamin M, so both names were later discarded;
Also, some vitamins followed the trend and had trendier names, such as vitamin B5 renamed pantothenic acid and vitamin B9 renamed folic acid.

Rectifying vitamins

Because the history of vitamin naming was so confusing, the International Union of Nutritional Sciences (IUNS) finally took over the matter and established the current principles of vitamin naming in 1978.

In short, the vitamin family wars have finally come to an end.