Minerals in Food

Nutrient minerals, being elements, cannot be synthesised biochemically by living organisms. Plants get the minerals they need from the soil, which is where they grow. It’s mostly from eating plants and animals, or drinking water, that humans get most of the minerals in their food and water. In terms of necessary nutrients, minerals are one of four groups: vitamins, essential fatty acids, and essential amino acids are the others. Calcium, potassium, sodium, phosphorus and magnesium are the five most abundant minerals in the human body. Trace elements are the remaining elements in the human body. There are a number of trace elements in the human body that have a specialised biochemical purpose. These include sulphur, ferrous iron, cobalt, copper, zinc, manganese, molybdenum, iodine,chlorine and selenium.

Essential Chemical Elements For human

Some twenty chemical elements are thought to be important for human biochemical processes because they play structural and functional roles, but they also play an important role as electrolytes.

These four elements make up about 96 percent weight of a human body. They are the most common elements in the body, but they don’t make up all of its weight. Calcium makes up 920 to 1200 grams of an adult’s body weight. Most of it is found in bones and teeth. This is about 1.5% of your weight. Some people have more phosphorus in their bodies than calcium, and it makes up about 1% of their weight. It only takes up about 0.85% of the weight of the body to be made up of potassium, sodium, chlorine, sulphur, and magnesium. These eleven chemical elements (H, C, N, O, Ca, P, K, Na, Cl, S, Mg) make up 99.85% of the body. Rest of 18 ultratrace minerals make up just 0.15% of the body, or about 100 grams for the average person. Different people think that different ultratrace elements are important for humans and other animals, even though they all use the same data. It’s not clear whether chromium is important for humans to have as a trace element, for example. The United States and Japan say that chromium is an important nutrient. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which represents the European Union, looked into the question in 2014 and doesn’t agree.

Most of the mineral nutrients that are known and thought to be important are of a low atomic weight and are found on land, or in the ocean, for sodium and iodine.

Role in Biological Process

• Potassium-A systemic electrolyte that is required for sodium-dependent coregulation of ATP.

• Chlorine- Required for the generation of hydrochloric acid in the stomach and for the proper functioning of cellular pumps.

• Sodium- A systemic electrolyte that is required for potassium to co-regulate ATP.

• Calcium- Required for muscular, heart, and digestive system health; promotes bone formation (see hydroxyapatite); promotes blood cell synthesis and function; aids in blood coagulation.

• Phosphorus- A component of bones (see hydroxyapatite), cells, energy processing, DNA and ATP (in the form of phosphate), and a variety of other functions.

• Magnesium- Required for ATP synthesis and bone formation

• Iron- Required for the production of numerous proteins and enzymes, most notably haemoglobin, which prevents anaemia.

• Zinc- Required for the activity of various enzyme types, including matrix metalloproteinases, liver alcohol dehydrogenase, carbonic anhydrase, and zinc finger proteins.

• Manganese- Required cofactor for superoxide dismutase

• Copper- Required cofactor for cytochrome c oxidase

• Iodine- Required for thyroid hormone synthesis

• Chromium- Although its mechanisms of action in the body and the levels required for good health are not well-defined, it is involved in glucose and lipid metabolism.

Dietary Nutrition 

Dietitians may say that the best way to get the minerals you need is to eat certain foods that are high in the chemical element(s) of interest. There are a lot of different ways that the elements can be found in a food. For example, calcium can be found in dairy milk (e.g., orange juice fortified with calcium; iodized salt fortified with iodine). As compounds, dietary supplements can have many different chemical elements, a mix of vitamins and other chemical compounds, or a single element, like calcium, magnesium, or iron (ferrous sulphate, iron bis-glycinate).

The focus on chemical elements in food comes from an interest in supporting the biochemical reactions of metabolism with the right elements. Some chemical elements have been shown to be necessary to keep your body in good shape. Diet can meet all of the body’s chemical element needs, but supplements can be used when the diet doesn’t meet some of them. When a person doesn’t get enough calcium from dairy products, they won’t be able to meet the recommended amount.

Conclusion

Those elements found in the ground and in foods that our bodies require in order to develop and operate normally are referred to as minerals. Calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, chloride, magnesium, iron, zinc, iodine, chromium, copper, fluoride, molybdenum, manganese, and selenium are just a few of the minerals that are necessary for good health. The five most important minerals are iron, calcium (as we all know, calcium is essential for strong bones, and it is especially important for children), zinc, and copper. Iron is the most important mineral. Magnesium (Magnesium is essential for both bone health and energy production), Zinc (Zinc performs a number of important functions), and Potassium are all important nutrients.