The Hunt for Vitamins: teacher key

Healthy Eating, grade 9 edition, written for 9th grade. Meet the scientists who studied hens and rats and named vitamins. Then see what vitamins and minerals do, and how food is taken apart in the body.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. Who concluded in 1897 that a substance in rice husk protected against symptoms in hens?
   • Frederick Hopkins
   • Christiaan Eijkman (answer)
   • Casimir Funk
2. What did Hopkins find when young rats were fed only pure nutrients?
   • They grew faster
   • They stopped growing until a little milk was added (answer)
   • They lost their fur
3. Where does the word vitamin come from?
   • Vita, meaning life, and amine (answer)
   • A Greek word for rice
   • The name of a Nobel Prize
4. Why does the body need a fresh supply of vitamin C each day?
   • It dissolves in water and is not stored (answer)
   • It dissolves in fat and is stored
   • Only sunlight makes it
5. What does vitamin D help the body absorb?
   • Iron
   • Water
   • Calcium (answer)
6. What can bind iron so the body cannot use it?
   • Tea (answer)
   • Citrus
   • Beans

Words

• vitamin: needed nutrient
• husk: outer shell
• fortified: vitamins added
• esophagus: food tube
• calcium: bone mineral