The understanding that vitamins are essential to good health goes without saying, but what exactly is a vitamin? Vitamins are organic compounds that are vital for the body. When an organism cannot produce, or synthesize, a compound sufficiently in their body, and therefore must obtain it through diet, the compound is then called a vitamin. In order for people to understand which foods contain which vitamins and in what amount, High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) methods are used by HPLC professionals to isolate and measure how much of a particular vitamin is in each food.
Continue reading to discover how exactly vitamins are measured by HPLC professionals.
A Brief History of Identifying Vitamins for Students in HPLC Training
In 1905, English scientist William Fletcher first discovered that eating unpolished rice would prevent the disease Beriberi, whereas polished rice did not. This was due to vitamins existing in the rice husk. In 1906, Fredrick Gowland discovered this phenomenon as well, and proceeded to name the nutritional aspects of food ‘vitamines’, with ‘vita’ meaning life, and ‘amine’ referring to the thiamine that was isolated from rice husks. From there, scientists worked at identifying the various vitamin compounds in food, until a major breakthrough in 1935 happened; scientists could synthesize vitamin C.
Although it is not stated, HPLC could have been used in these discovery processes, as HPLC was invented in the 1900s by Russian botanist Bikhail S. Tswett. Today, as HPLC training courses will show you, HPLC is one of the most powerful tools in analytical chemistry, and is used in various ways to identify vitamin levels in foods.
Pros With HPLC Training Know There Are Numerous HPLC Methods With Different Applications
Generally speaking, there are two types of vitamins; water-soluble and fat-soluble. The vitamins that water-soluble vitamins include B group vitamins, vitamin D, and vitamin C, among others. Fat-soluble vitamins are vitamin A, vitamin E, and vitamin K. Each of these categories of vitamins requires a different HPLC method.
Essentially, HPLC methods use a high-pressure pump to deliver a solvent into an HPLC column. The test-material is injected into the flowing solvent and then components are identified and quantified as they pass through the column. These results are then sent to a computer module. There are both normal-phase and reverse-phase HPLC methods that are used for various purposes. Reversed-phase HPLC is well-suited for vitamin analysis, but there are numerous HPLC methods that can be used to isolate and analyze vitamins. In HPLC training you’ll learn about these various methods and what situations to use them in. The main advantage of HPLC identification of vitamins is that it provides the opportunity to identify individual vitamin forms extremely accurately.
The identification of vitamins in foods has led to better health for a whole population. Since the naming of the ‘vitamine’ in 1906, to the ability to synthesize them and finally to current advances in HPLC technology to isolate and identify vitamins, vitamins and HPLC play key roles in our country’s health.
Want to find out how else training in an HPLC program can lead to applying the technology to better the health of Canadians?
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