The Elements of Mineral
Minerals are inorganic elements that occur in nature. They originate from earth’s crust and in animal or plant cellules constitute only a small proportion of the body tissue.
During dry or wet ash-destruction process, the organic matrix of the illogical sample is completely decomposed and removed in the form of volatile carboneous material, and the remaining material which is the nondestructive residue, contains only mineral compounds.
Many mineral elements are essential constituents of enzymes regulate a variety of physiologic processes (e.g. maintenance of osmotic pressure, oxygen transport, muscle contradiction and central nervous system integrity), and are required for the growth and maintenance of tissues and bones.
They are so potent and so important that without them the organism would not be able to use the other remaining constituent of foods.
The total daily diet contains minerals within the range of 0.2-0.3% of all nutrients. The main mass of these minerals is made up of six minerals, whereas dozens of other, present on trace quantities, constitute only a hundredth of a percent of the total mass of daily eaten nutrients.
Because of their broad biochemical activity, many inorganic compounds are also intentionally used as functional agents in processing a variety of foods.
On the other hand, cations in foods, such as Fe2+ and Cu2+, may induce a diversity of undesirable effects that influence the nutritional quality of foods.
Iron for example, can actively catalyses lipid oxidation and its presence even in trace amounts has long been recognized as potentially detrimental to the shelf-life of fats, oils, and fatty acids.
Iron compounds can activate molecular oxygen by producing superoxide, which through dismutation and other steps of biochemical changes results in the formation of hydroxyl free radicals.
Minerals play an important role in plant life. They function as catalysts for many biochemical reactions, are responsible for changes in the states of cellular colloids, directly affect the cell metabolism, and are involved in changes in protoplasm turgor and permeability.
In body tissues, other trace minerals also occurs, such as arsenic, aluminum, cadmium, lead and mercury, which until now have been recognized as potentially harmful, although recently, Al, As, Cd and Pb in very small quantities have been suggested to have some characteristics of essentially but lacking a defined biochemical function.
The Elements of Mineral
