A vitamin is an organic molecule which is vital for the survival of an organism and that the organism is unable to make itself. In other words, when the organism gets too little of a vitamin, it will become ill and it will eventually die. The final prognosis of avitaminosis, is death. In 100 per cent of the cases.

The problem we have now with vitamins is that people of the alternological movement, are advocating large doses of vitamins, even megadoses. The reasoning is that if a little is good, more is even better. That is not how it works however, and doctors and emergency rooms are currently seeing more and more patients with illnesses that are caused by vitamin overdoses.

The term was created by a Polish scientist, Casimir Funk (1884-1967). It is an abbreviation of vital amine because vitamins were thought to contain aminoacids at the time. However, when he coined the term, Funk was very aware that this was probably not going to be the end of the story. He nevertheless stuck with it, because he thought the word was an attractive one.