Vitamins in a healthy balanced diet

Vitamins are nutrients your body needs to work properly and stay healthy. Find out about common vitamins and how to get them through a healthy, balanced diet

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Vitamins

This page provides information on what these vitamins do, how much you need, how to get them through a healthy, balanced diet and what can happen if you have too much.

There are two main groups of vitamins: fat-soluble and water-soluble.

Fat soluble vitamins

Fat-soluble vitamins are found in plant and animal foods that contain fat, like nuts, seeds, milk, butter, vegetable oils, eggs, liver and oily fish. Our bodies can store fat-soluble vitamins, which means we don’t need to consume them every day. It can be harmful to consume a lot more fat-soluble vitamins than we need.

Fat-soluble vitamins include:

Water-soluble vitamins

Water-soluble vitamins come from food like fruit, vegetables, milk, dairy and grains. Unlike fat-soluble vitamins, our bodies can't store them. This means we need to eat them more often. If we consume more than we need, our bodies flush out the extra through urine.

Water-soluble vitamins can be destroyed more easily by heat or exposure to air than fat-soluble vitamins. They can also get lost in water when cooking, especially when boiling food.

Water-soluble vitamins include:

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