You need them only in tiny quantities, but you cannot get along without them. Vitamins help change the food we eat into bones, skin, muscles, nerves, and other parts of our bodies. A basic, balanced diet, such as I describe in this chapter, provides all the vitamins and minerals you need. About a billion and a half dollars are spent for vitamins every year. Much of that money is spent by perfectly healthy people who have been convinced by high powered advertisements that they need extra vitamins. Your doctor will certainly tell you if you need a supplement to the vitamins present in your normal diet.

If your diet is not balanced, the accompanying lack of vitamins may produce what we doctors call deficiency diseases.

Some of these diseases have been recognized for centuries. The disease known as scurvy was a familiar one to seafaring people for hundreds of years before the suspected it had anything to do with the diet on which sailors had to exist when they went on long voyages. Scurvy made them weak, caused their gums to bleed and their teeth to fall out, made their muscles ache, and eventually ended in death. About two hundred years ago, Dr. Joseph Lind, a British naval surgeon, found that the juice of citrus fruits would cure or prevent scurvy. Lime juice was subsequently carried on British ships so that sailors could have some every day, with the result that scurvy was eliminated and British sailors came to be known as "limeys." Now we know that the value of the juice was in the vitamin C which citrus fruits contain.

Lack of vitamin A causes poor vision in dim light (called "night blindness"). Without vitamin D the bones fail to harden properly, causing rickets, one result of which we could see in bow legs, from which so many children used to suffer. Lack of B vitamins causes several diseases such as beriberi and pellagra. Victims of this latter defi ciency disease are weakened to the point of help lessness, their minds frequently being affected. Pellagra is widespread in certain poverty stricken areas where the people have to exist on a monot onous diet: for example, the sharecropper in the South. However, it is not limited to any group. Some years ago the son of a well to do family was referred to the hospital with which I was asso ciated; his poor school record bad led his teachers to believe he was mentally retarded. Fortunately he was given a complete checkup which revealed perhaps the last thing a doctor would have sus pected that he was suffering from pellagra. It was then discovered that his father, who had undergone several stomach operations and had been limited to a diet consisting of soups and gruel, bad decided this diet would be good for his son if it was good for him, and had limited the boy to the same fare!

In addition to these striking deficiency diseases, lack of vitamins can cause milder disturbances that are more difficult to detect. Both the mild and the severe cases can be prevented by a balanced diet which contains all of the vitamins.

It is necessary for us to get our vitamins from foods because the human body cannot manufac ture them with the exception of vitamin D. Our bodies can make this when sunlight falls on the skin. However, we seldom can manufacture enough vitamin D all through the year, especially those of us who work indoors or live in the North. So we must obtain vitamin D, too, in our food.

The following table shows some good sources of each of the principal vitamins:

VITAMIN A

Vegetable greens, e.g., beet, kale, chard, mustard, spinach, turnip
Yellow vegetables, e.g., carrots, yellow squash, sweet potato
Beef liver
Cod liver oil; halibut liver oil

VITAMIN B

(The vitamin B family consists of several vitamins, including thiamine, niacin, etc.)
Liver, pork, beef, salmon
Whole wheat bread, enriched bread, cereals, e.g., oatmeal
Peanut butter, peanuts

VITAMIN C

Citrus fruits oranges, lemons, grapefruits, limes
Tomato juice (fresh or canned)
Strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, currants

VITAMIN D

Halibut liver oil and other refined fish oil preparations Vitamin D milk
Exposure to sunlight (not sufficient alone, especially for dark skinned people. Sunlight through glass will not make vitamin D).

(Concentrates of vitamin D are frequently prescribed by doctors for children.) "But why should I bother with this chart?" you may ask. "Why shouldn't I just buy my vitamins at the drugstore?"

In the first place, it is more expensive. No one should spend money to purchase only vitamins if it is needed to buy foods which contain other essentials in addition to the vitamins in them. In the second place, there is still no guarantee that all the purified vitamins known at present to medical science are as good as those which nature provides. So don't buy vitamin pills, capsules, or other products unless your doctor says you need some concentrated supplements.

Vitamin-Mineral Supplement Buyer's Guide

Research shows that the vitamins found in certain foods may prevent some diseases, but it remains unproven whether supplements do the same. If you choose to take vitamin and mineral supplements, the following guidelines may be helpful:

Choose a balanced, multiplevitamin-mineral supplement rather than a specific vitamin or mineral, unless it has been prescribed by a doctor.

Avoid taking much more than 100 percent of the recommended daily allowance for any vitamin or mineral unless prescribed by a doctor. This is particularly important for the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, and for minerals. Because these are stored in the body, large doses can be toxic.

High-priced brand-name vitamins are no better than store or generic brands.