Essential Minerals

The essential minerals are those that have well defined biochemical roles and must be in the diet of vertebrates for optimum health and productivity.

There are seven minerals known to be essential and that are present in fairly large quantities, are calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, chloride, magnesium and sulfur.

The principal minerals present in micro quantities are iron, copper, cobalt, manganese, zinc, iodine and molybdenum. These minor minerals are needed in amounts less than 100 per day.

Accumulating evidence indicates that selenium, fluoride and chromium are essential elements for mostly species and nickel, silicon, tin, and vanadium are essential for some animals and likely also for man.

The amount needed each for optimal health and productivity is referred to as the dietary requirement.

Essential elements characteristically tend to concentrate in body tissues in a fairly consistent fashion; absorption from the gut and excretion through the kidney, bile, or other intestinal secretions are precisely regulated by body homeostatic mechanisms.

A number of minerals that in minute amounts are essential to body functioning are toxic when accumulated in large amounts. Iron, zinc, and manganese as well as some of the newly detected-essential trace mineral are in this category.

The elements are required for a variety of functions including giving structure at the skeleton, muscle contractions, blood formation, the synthesis of protein and the production of energy.

In order to analyze minerals that are present in biological material the elements must be freed from the organic complexes to which they are bound.

The mineral elements are not homogenously distributed among various types of food is clear: few foods other than dairy products are rich in calcium; sea foods constitute the best sources of iodine and chloride; meats are the most important sources of iron; and protein rich foods comprise the best sources of zinc, copper and selenium.
Essential Minerals