Vitamin A

Vitamin A is an essential fat-soluble vitamin. Fat-soluble vitamins (A D E and K) are stored within your fat resources, while water-soluble vitamins are stored within the water resources of your body. As a result your body can live from vitamin A resources you ate 2 weeks ago. Vitamin B resources for example have to be refreshed all the time. The bad side of this is that you can poison yourself eating too much vitamin A. For information about other vitamins go to nutrition main. Everybody knows that vitamin A is good for the eyes, but it is also required for the immune system, protein synthesis, bone metabolism, etc.

Functions: Vitamin A

  • Vision - The retina (light sensitive part of the eye) needs vitamin A to function. Deficiency can cause night blindness, blurred vision etc.
  • Protein Synthesis
  • Immune Function
  • Bone Metabolism
  • Skin Health - Vitamin A helps maintaining normal skin health.
  • Reduces the Risk of Heart Diseases and Cancer
  • Antioxidant Activity
  • Growth and much more ...
  • When you read about the metabolic functions, keep in mind that vitamin A is fat-soluble. So if you eat way more vitamin A than you need, that doesn't mean that your skin will be even healthier or that your protein synthesis will become better. Don't forget that you can overload (poison) your body with any fat-soluble vitamin. Deficiency symptoms and toxic effects of vitamin A are similar.

Recommended intake: Vitamin A

  • The list below shows how many percent of the RDI different foods contain.
    RDI = "Required Daily Intake" of an adult.
    • Liver (beef, pork, chicken, turkey, fish) -> 10g = 72% of the RDI.
      So when you eat 100g of pork liver, you get 7 times more (720 %) vitamin A
      than you need.
    • Carrots -> 100g = 93%
    • Broccoli Leaves -> 100g = 89%
    • Sweet Potatoes -> 100g = 79%
    • Butter -> 100g = 76%
    • Spinach -> 100g = 52%
    • Pumpkin -> 100g = 41%
    • Eggs -> 100g = 16%
    • Apricots -> 100g = 11%
    • Papaya -> 100g = 6%
    • Mango -> 100g = 4%
    • Peas -> 100g = 4%

Advice: Vitamin A

  • The recommended daily vitamin A intake for an adult (20 to 70 years) is 0,9 mg. The upper limit is 3 mg. Babies only need 0,4 mg and 0,6 mg can already be too much.
  • When you are already eating too much vitamin A, excessive alcohol intake can increase its toxicity. Smokers, on the other hand, often show deficiency symptoms.
  • Normally you don't have to care much about vitamin A intake. As long as your are eating your vegetables form time to time, everything should be ok. Actually most people eat much more vitamin A than they need.
  • Inner organs contain a lot of vitamin A and cholesterol. For example: Liver, kidney etc. 100g liver contains 7 times more vitamin A than you need per day.
  • Researchers have succeeded in creating a water-soluble form of vitamin A. However, later they found out that their water-soluble vitamin A was 10 times as toxic as the original fat-soluble vitamin A.