Vitamin C is an essential micronutrient required for normal metabolic functioning of the body. To the best of scientific knowledge, all animals and plants synthesize their own vitamin C, except for a small number of animals, including guinea pigs, humans, apes, the red-vented bulbul, a fruit eating bat and a species of trout, that cannot.
Vitamin C is a small molecule, a white crystalline substance similar in structure to glucose. It consists of a single molecule, called ascorbic acid or ascorbate.
The active part of the substance is the ascorbate ion, which can express itself as either an acid or a salt of ascorbate, that is neutral or slightly basic. Commercial vitamin C is often a mix of ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbate and/or other ascorbates.
Probably the most well known of all vitamins C’s benefits are to powerful antioxidant properties that protect the body from the damaging effects of oxidation. It readily scavenges reactive oxygen, nitrogen and chlorine species, thereby effectively protecting other substrates from oxidative damage.
In 1974, Cameron and Pauling suggested that vitamin C might play a role in the supportive care of cancer patients.
Vitamin C is an efficient water soluble one electron reducing agent that would be predicted to have efficacy in preventing oxidative DNA damage.
The stability of vitamin C is of main concern because this is the most labile vitamin in foods. Its main loss during processing and storage is from oxidation, which is accelerated by light, oxygen heat, increased pH, high moisture content and the present of copper or ferrous salts.
Vitamin C in general
