Vitamin Supplement - Editorial

The theme of the conference was 'Vitamins in foods and supplements: Analytical possibilities versus nutritional needs in human research, food databases, and labeling'. All 13 vitamins were represented. Although vitamin D and folate that in recent years have been heavily debated, also were the one in focus and is represented in 8 of the 17 papers included in this vitamin supplement. Furthermore, vitamin K covered a whole session and is discussed in three papers, while six papers are more general or cover other vitamins. An adequate intake of vitamins is necessary for survival and good health. Appropriate analytical methods to assess the content of vitamins in our foods are of outmost importance. Preferably these should be combined with the assessment of the optimal daily dietary intake of vitamin to achieve the most beneficial vitamin status for a healthy life. These goals have not yet been established for several of the vitamins, which was one of the main reasons to set up the conference. The origin of vitamins is diverse, and the variety of the vitamin-active compounds depends on the origin of vitamins, for example is it a plant product or a product of animal origin? Similar to the story for human 'You are what you eat', the nutrient in our food depends on the growth condition for plant and the feeding procedures for animal products. Two papers describe how to use biofortification to increase the content of vitamin. Mushrooms are shown to be a very promising vitamin D source, if exposed to light in the region of 290Á315 nm (1) and biofortification of folate in pita bread is a possibility by germination prior to milling (2). The above examples indicate that, for example selection of the food to be analysed to assess vitamin content in our food is a challenge. The paper by Roe and Finglas (3) shortly describes the European initiatives to improve the tool behind the food composition data and the European Standard for Food Composition Data based on the EuroFIR initiatives. The initial step to build a European food composition database for ethnic food showed huge diversity in products and in the contents of vitamins. The authors ask for a cautious approach to use the data for calculation of dietary intake (4). The paper by Gregory (5) describes the differences in the bioactivity and bioavailability of vitamers, and the importance to take these differences into account in …