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50 free Vitamin trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Vitamins trivia for anyone who has ever wondered why the alphabet jumps from vitamin E to vitamin K, why British sailors were called limeys, or why a slice of polar-bear liver can kill you. This quiz covers all thirteen vitamins that human bodies need: the four fat-soluble ones (A, D, E and K) and the nine water-soluble ones (vitamin C and the eight B vitamins). The questions move through the deficiency diseases that revealed each vitamin (scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, rickets, pernicious anaemia), the scientists who chased them down (James Lind, Christiaan Eijkman, Casimir Funk, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Dorothy Hodgkin) and the odd facts along the way: bright yellow urine, egg-white injury, nicotinic acid renamed to keep bread from sounding like tobacco, and rice engineered to make beta-carotene. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. If you enjoy this one, try our human body, chemistry and famous scientists quizzes next.
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Q 01How many vitamins do major health organizations recognise as essential for humans?
13
Four are fat-soluble (A, D, E, K) and nine dissolve in water: vitamin C plus the eight B vitamins.
Q 02Which four vitamins are fat-soluble?
A, D, E and K
Because they can be stored in body fat and the liver, vitamins A and D can build up to dangerous levels, unlike the water-soluble ones that are quickly excreted.
Q 03Who coined the word 'vitamine' in 1912?
Casimir Funk
The Polish-born biochemist was working at London's Lister Institute; his friend Max Nierenstein suggested fusing 'vital' and 'amine'.
Q 04Why was the final 'e' dropped from 'vitamine' in 1920?
Because not all vitamins turned out to be amines
Jack Cecil Drummond proposed the change once researchers suspected vitamin A, in particular, contained no amine group at all.
Q 05Scurvy is caused by a deficiency of which nutrient?
Vitamin C
Without it the body cannot form collagen properly, so wounds fail to heal and gums bleed.
Q 06Which Scottish naval surgeon ran a 1747 trial showing citrus fruit prevented scurvy?
James Lind
His experiment aboard HMS Salisbury, comparing cider, vinegar, seawater and oranges on twelve sick sailors, is often called the first controlled clinical trial.
Q 07The Royal Navy's adoption of citrus juice against scurvy gave British sailors which nickname?
Limeys
The switch from Mediterranean lemons to West Indian limes in the 19th century backfired: limes carry far less vitamin C, and Arctic expeditions kept getting scurvy.
Q 08Aboard which ship was the famous 1747 citrus-and-scurvy experiment carried out?
HMS Salisbury
The trial began on 20 May 1747 while the ship patrolled the Bay of Biscay; Lind published his Treatise on the Scurvy six years later.
Q 09Which British circumnavigator lost nearly two-thirds of his 2,000 men, mainly to scurvy, in the 1740s?
George Anson
About 1,300 died within the first ten months; James Lind later dedicated his Treatise on the Scurvy to him.
Q 10Which fermented food carried on James Cook's Endeavour voyage was a good source of vitamin C?
Sauerkraut
Cook lost not one man to scurvy, though he credited malt and wort; cleanliness and constant fresh provisions were the real reason.
Q 11Which disease of polished-white-rice diets is caused by a lack of thiamine?
Beriberi
Its name may come from a Sinhalese phrase meaning 'I cannot, I cannot', describing the weakness it brings.
Q 12The name of the thiamine-deficiency disease is thought to mean 'I cannot, I cannot' in which language?
Sinhalese
Wet beriberi attacks the heart and circulation; dry beriberi attacks the nerves.
Q 13Takaki Kanehiro's 1884 experiment feeding two battleship crews different diets was for which navy?
Japan
The rice-only crew logged 161 cases and 25 deaths; the crew fed meat, fish, barley and beans had 14 cases and no deaths.
Q 21Cod liver oil, once marketed as 'bottled sunshine', is a rich source of what?
Vitamin D
Northern European parents dosed children a teaspoon a day well into the 1950s to ward off rickets.
Q 22Which childhood bone disease, marked by bowed legs, results from a lack of vitamin D?
Rickets
It plagued smog-choked London during the Industrial Revolution and is still called 'the English disease' in some languages.
Q 23Which organ performs the final step that turns vitamin D into its active form, calcitriol?
Kidney
The liver first makes calcifediol; the kidneys hydroxylate it again, which is why kidney disease often brings vitamin D deficiency.
Q 14Christiaan Eijkman's Nobel-winning 1897 work on polished versus unpolished rice used which animals?
Chickens
He shared the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Frederick Hopkins, who had proposed that foods contained 'accessory factors'.
Q 15Which Japanese scientist isolated the first vitamin complex from rice bran in 1910 but was overlooked?
Umetaro Suzuki
He named it aberic acid, later Orizanin; the translation omitted his claim that it was a newly discovered nutrient.
Q 16Why does the vitamin alphabet skip from E to K?
The letters F to J were once vitamins but were reclassified or discarded
Many of the dropped letters turned out to be members of the B complex or false leads.
Q 17The 'K' in vitamin K comes from a word in which language?
Danish
Henrik Dam's Danish-speaking team named it for its role in blood clotting; Dam shared the 1943 Nobel Prize with Edward Doisy.
Q 18Newborn babies are routinely given an injection of what to prevent dangerous bleeding?
Vitamin K
Infants are born with clotting factors at only 30-60% of adult levels because the vitamin crosses the placenta poorly.
Q 19Patients on the anticoagulant warfarin are told to keep their intake of what consistent?
Vitamin K
Foods like collard greens and spinach are so rich in it that some patients are told to avoid them entirely.
Q 20What does human skin manufacture when exposed to ultraviolet light?
Vitamin D
Sunlight converts 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin into vitamin D3; the liver and kidneys then activate it.
Q 24Calcitriol is the active form of what?
Vitamin D
Calcitriol works like a hormone, binding nuclear receptors that switch on calcium-transport genes in the gut.
Q 25Ancient Egyptians treated night blindness by feeding patients which food?
Liver
Night blindness is an early sign of vitamin A deficiency, and animal liver is packed with stored retinol.
Q 26Eating the liver of which Arctic animal can cause acute vitamin A poisoning?
Polar bear
Its liver has been measured at up to 10,400 micrograms of retinol per gram, thousands of times a safe daily dose.
Q 27Eating large amounts of carrots for weeks can turn skin orange, a harmless condition called what?
Carotenemia
Beta-carotene is a vitamin A precursor; the body simply stops converting it once retinol stores are full, so the excess tints the skin.
Q 28'Golden Rice' was genetically engineered to produce which vitamin precursor?
Beta-carotene
The Philippines became the first country to issue a biosafety permit for growing it commercially in July 2021.
Q 29Which essential nutrient is the only one that cannot be obtained from plant foods?
Vitamin B12
It is made only by certain bacteria and archaea, which is why strict vegans are advised to supplement.
Q 30Which metal sits at the centre of the vitamin B12 molecule?
Cobalt
Its chemical name, cobalamin, gives the game away; it is the most structurally complex vitamin known.