Dietary mineral

Dietary minerals are the chemical elementsrequired by living organisms, other than the four elements Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Oxygenwhich are ubiquitous in organic molecules. They can be either bulk minerals(required in relatively large amounts) or trace minerals(required only in very small amounts).

These can be naturally occurring in foodor added in elemental or mineralform, such as calcium carbonateor sodium chloride. Some of these additives come from natural sources such as ground oystershells. Sometimes minerals are added to the diet separately from food, as vitaminand mineral supplements and in dirt eating, called pica or geophagy.

Appropriate intake levels of each dietary mineral must be sustained to maintain physical health. Excessive intake of a dietary mineral may either lead to illness directly or indirectly because of the competitive nature between mineral levels in the body. For example, large doses of zinc are not really harmful unto themselves, but will lead to a harmful copper deficiency (unless compensated for, as in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study).

Soils in different geographic areas contain varying quantities of minerals.

In human nutrition, the dietary bulk mineral elements (RDA > 200 mg/day) are (in alphabetical order):

• Calcium
• Chloride
• Magnesium
• Phosphorus
• Potassium
• Sodium
• Sulfur

and the most important trace mineral elements (RDA < 200 mg/day) are (again, in alphabetical order):

• Chromium
• Cobalt
• Copper
• Fluorine
• Iodine
• Iron
• Manganese
• Molybdenum
• Selenium
• Zinc

Iodine is required in larger quantities than the other trace minerals in this list and is sometimes counted with the bulk minerals. Sodium is not generally found in dietary supplements, despite being needed in large quantities, because the mineral is so common in food. This list is not an endorsement of the need of any of these minerals as dietary supplements.

Many other minerals have been suggested as required in human nutrition, in varying quantities. Standards of evidence vary for different elements, and not all have been definitively established as essential to human nutrition. Common candidates include

• Arsenic
• Bismuth(suspect)
• Boron
• Nickel
• Rubidium(suspect)
• Silicon
• Strontium(suspect)
• Tellurium(suspect)
• Titanium(suspect)
• Tungsten(some organisms use tungsten rather than molybdenum)
• Vanadium

Elements for which convincing scientific evidence is lacking are marked as suspect.

Various other elements found in food supplies may vary from holding no known nutritional value (such as silver) to being toxic (such as mercury).

Food sources

• Dairy products and green leafy vegetables for Calcium
• Nuts, soy beans, and cocoa for Magnesium
• Table salt (sodium chloride, the main source), milk and spinach for Soidum
• Legumes, whole grains, and bananas for Potassium
• Table salt is its main dietary source for Chlorine
• Meat, eggs, and legumes for Sulfur

See also

• Macronutrient
• Micronutrient

External links

• Bartleby Encyclopedia article on dietary minerals
• Metals in Nutritionde:Spurenelement

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References

Rebecca J. Donatelle. Health, The Basics. 6th ed. San Francisco: Pearson Education, Inc. 2005.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary+mineral Wikipedia article Dietary mineral.