Mineral (nutrient)

The generally accepted trace elements are iron, chlorine, cobalt, copper, zinc, manganese, molybdenum, iodine, selenium,[5] and bromine;[6] there is some evidence that there may be more.

The four organogenic elements, namely carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (CHON), that comprise roughly 96% of the human body by weight,[7] are usually not considered as minerals (nutrient).

In fact, in nutrition, the term "mineral" refers more generally to all the other functional and structural elements found in living organisms.

Twenty chemical elements are known to be required to support human biochemical processes by serving structural and functional roles, and there is evidence for a few more.

Total fractions in this paragraph are amounts based on summing percentages from the article on chemical composition of the human body.

Some diversity of opinion exist about the essential nature of various ultratrace elements in humans (and other mammals), even based on the same data.

[13] Most of the known and suggested mineral nutrients are of relatively low atomic weight, and are reasonably common on land, or for sodium and iodine, in the ocean.

[36] Dietitians may recommend that minerals are best supplied by ingesting specific foods rich with the chemical element(s) of interest.

The gap between recommended daily intake and what are considered safe upper limits (ULs) can be small.

For example, for calcium the U.S. Food and Drug Administration set the recommended intake for adults over 70 years at 1,200 mg/day and the UL at 2,000 mg/day.

[5] For example, it was once thought that arsenic was probably essential in mammals,[40] but it seems to be only used by microbes;[6] and while chromium was long thought to be an essential trace element based on rodent models, and was proposed to be involved in glucose and lipid metabolism,[41][42] more recent studies have conclusively ruled this possibility out.

[1] Diverse ions are used by animals and microorganisms for the process of mineralizing structures, called biomineralization, used to construct bones, seashells, eggshells,[53] exoskeletons and mollusc shells.

[55] Mineral nutrients are recycled by bacteria distributed throughout soils, oceans, freshwater, groundwater, and glacier meltwater systems worldwide.