Vitamin A

Trang Vu
Period 2

Culinary Arts
Period 2
 Yours eyes are your windows

When looking, youll see the soul.

All the feelings of a person: love, hate, hurt, etc. are all hidden inside the eyes. Vision is a

very important sense that a person would find difficult without it. Vitamin A is a substance found

in foods that are essential for vision (Vitamins). One famous form of vitamin A is retinol,

which is a yellow compound found in most green and yellow foods. It is essential for growth and

vision in dim light. Another one is the carotenes, which is an orange or red plant pigment found

in carrots and many other plant structures.

Vitamin A can be found in many different sources. One of the most famous source is

carrot (Whitbread). Carrot is a root vegetable, usually in orange, and the beta-carotene inside it

can help prevent night blindness (Carrots). Carrots can be eaten in many different ways: raw

carrots, boiled carrots, or even baked carrots. Another source that is quite expensive is sweet

potato. Sweet potato is also a root vegetable, and the raw sweet potato also contains a rich beta-

carotene inside it (Sweet Potato). Sweet potatoes can be eaten in different ways depended on

different cultures, such as in China, sweet potatoes are baked and sold as street food during

winter, or in Ethiopia, sweet potatoes are boiled and served as a snack. Choosing different

sources of vitamin A both gives a variety of tastes and a better use of it.

Vitamin A not only deal with visions, but also many other things. One of them is gene

transcription, which vitamin A is in a retinoic acid form (Vitamin A). This is the first step of

gene expression, in which a particular segment of DNA is copied into RNA. Another one is

immune system. The retinol and beta-carotene found in vitamin A affect the immune response

significantly, in a good way ("Vitamin Effects on the Immune System"). Another significant
function of vitamin A is dermatology. Vitamin A, in a retinoic acid form, helps to maintain a

normal skin health by switching on genes and changing immature into mature skin cells

(Vitamin A). Vitamin A actually has many more functions, such as bones, but vision is still the

most significant one.

Vitamin A can be helpful and healthy in many ways, but having too much or too little of

it can cause problems as well. There are thirty-three percent of children under the age of five

from the developing countries found to have deficiency of vitamin A (Maziya-Dixon3*). Having

too much of vitamin A can cause chronic toxicity, while having too little of it can cause night

blindness; so make sure you always the right amount of vitamin A in your body. An excellent

source of vitamin A that no one would ever thought of is polar bear liver. Polar bear liver

contains a greater capacity to store vitamin A in their liver than most other animals (121dietitian).

But polar bear liver contains way too much vitamin A, it would create a deficiency to humans

that can even cause death.

Vitamin A is a very important nutrition that is essential in our daily life, especially when

it involves with vision. There are many sources and many ways to get vitamin A, so that you

would not feel plain when having it in your diet every day. It is also important to keep track of

your vitamin A consumption, so there would not be any misfortune.

 Work Cited

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2016.

"Carrot." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.

Maziya-Dixon3*, Busie B., Isaac O. Akinyele4, Rasaki A. Sanusi4, Tunde E. Oguntona5,

and And Sagary K. Nokoe6. "Defeciency of Vitamin A in Children." Vitamin A Deficiency Is

Prevalent in Children Less Than 5 Y of Age in Nigeria. N.p., 01 Aug. 2006. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.

"Sweet Potato." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.

"Vitamin A." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2016. "Vitamin

Effects on the Immune System." National Center of Biotechnology Information. N.p., n.d. Web.

11 Nov. 2016.

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Nemours Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.

Whitbread, Daisy. "Top 10 Foods Highest in Vitamin A." HealthAliciousNess. N.p., n.d.

Web. 11 Nov. 2016.