Geological Impacts on Nutrition

Abstract

Humans, like all living organisms, biosynthesize the proteins, nucleic acids, phospholipids, and many of the smaller molecules on which they depend for life functions. Their health and well-being also depend on their ability to obtain from their external chemical environments a number of compounds that they cannot synthesize, or that they cannot produce at rates sufficient to support vital functions. Thus, of the large set of bioactive compounds and metabolites called “nutrients,” some are referred to as “essential” because they must be obtained from the air (oxygen), diet and water. These include vitamins, some fatty acids, some amino acids, and several mineral elements. Foods contain essential nutrients as a result of the capacities of plants and, in some cases, food animals to synthesize and/or store them. The human body, therefore, consists of substantial amounts of mineral elements (see Table 8.1) obtained mostly from such foods. These elements ultimately come from soils and, in turn, from the parent materials from which soils are derived. Therefore, good mineral nutrition is, in part, a geologic issue.