This term was first used in a 1912 article by the Polish researcher Casimir Funk. It's a portmanteau of 'vita' and 'amine'. When it later turned out that there were no “amines” at all, Funk wrote that he had mainly been searching for a catchy name that everyone could remember. He also traveled to the US to sell his vitamin preparations. Read more about Casimir Funk here.
Vitamins are essential nutrients
A vitamin is a substance that we must ingest, otherwise certain processes don't function properly. It is therefore essential. And because we don't produce it ourselves, it must come from outside. The logical source is our food, after all, that's where vitamins were discovered. You buy vitamins from the greengrocer, not from the drugstore. 😊 Read more about the vitamin definition here.
Where do we find vitamin A?
The substance found in carrots is called carotene (carota = carrot). Our body produces retinol from this substance. Carotene is therefore the precursor to vitamin A. In the last century, this substance produced by the body (retinol) was called vitamin A, even though this goes against the definition of a vitamin. Later, increasingly sophisticated methods were devised to replicate this substance, and its derivatives, in a factory. Retinyl esters such as retinyl acetate or retinyl palmitate are now added to our food as “vitamin A.” The most efficient method of replicating this is by combining acetone and acetylene. Read more about vitamin A here.
That is why packaged rabbit food and other animal feed (but also human food from the supermarket!) almost always contains such a retinyl ester. Open the infobox about the synthetic production of vitamin A here.
