Vitamins are tested in almost every General Awareness paper, and the questions are predictable: which vitamin, which chemical name, which disease. Most candidates try to memorise three separate lists. There is a better way, and it starts with one division that explains nearly everything else.
The Hinge: Stored or Flushed Out
Every vitamin is one of two kinds, and the difference is simply what it dissolves in.
| Fat-soluble (A, D, E, K) | Water-soluble (B-complex, C) | |
|---|---|---|
| Dissolves in | Fat | Water |
| What the body does with extra | Stores it, mostly in the liver | Passes it out in urine |
| How often you need it | Not necessarily every day | Every day |
| Can too much harm you? | Yes — it accumulates | Rarely, because the excess leaves |
| How fast deficiency shows | Slowly, after stores run down | Faster |
That single table answers questions people think are unrelated. Why does a child get one large vitamin A dose twice a year rather than a daily one? Because it is stored. Why is vitamin C the classic disease of long sea voyages? Because it is not. Why do warnings exist about vitamin supplement overdose but almost never about vitamin C? Same reason.
Memory trick for the fat-soluble four: they are the letters in “A, D, E, K” — everything else is water-soluble. Four to remember, not nine.
The Table the Exam Actually Asks From
| Vitamin | Chemical name | Deficiency disease |
|---|---|---|
| A | Retinol | Night blindness; severe cases, xerophthalmia |
| B1 | Thiamine | Beriberi |
| B2 | Riboflavin | Cracked lips and mouth sores (cheilosis) |
| B3 | Niacin | Pellagra |
| B6 | Pyridoxine | Anaemia, skin and nerve problems |
| B7 | Biotin | Hair loss and skin problems |
| B9 | Folic acid | Megaloblastic anaemia; in pregnancy, neural tube defects |
| B12 | Cyanocobalamin | Pernicious anaemia |
| C | Ascorbic acid | Scurvy |
| D | Calciferol | Rickets in children, osteomalacia in adults |
| E | Tocopherol | Rare; affects red blood cells and fertility |
| K | Phylloquinone | Blood takes too long to clot |
Four pairs cause most of the lost marks:
- Rickets and osteomalacia are the same deficiency — vitamin D — in children and in adults.
- Beriberi (B1) and pellagra (B3) are routinely swapped. Beriberi begins with B-one; pellagra has three syllables like B-three.
- Folic acid is B9 and cyanocobalamin is B12, and both cause anaemia — but only B9 is the pregnancy one, for neural tube defects.
- Vitamin K is for clotting, not for bones. The German word for clotting, Koagulation, is where the letter came from.
Three Facts That Are Not on the Table
- Vitamin D is the one the body can make itself, in the skin, using sunlight. That is why it is sometimes called the sunshine vitamin and why it behaves more like a hormone than a nutrient.
- Vitamin B12 comes almost entirely from animal sources — which is why it is the vitamin most often short in a vegetarian diet, and why India fortifies wheat flour and rice with it.
- Vitamin K is partly made by bacteria in the human gut. You do not eat all of it.
How India Adds Vitamins to Food
This is the half of the chapter that most notes skip and that current-affairs questions keep reaching for. Food fortification means adding vitamins and minerals to a food people already eat. It is governed by the Food Safety and Standards (Fortification of Foods) Regulations, 2018, and fortified products carry the +F logo.
Jargon, defined once. Hidden hunger is the official term for a diet that supplies enough calories but too little of particular vitamins and minerals. Someone can be fed and still be deficient, which is the whole reason fortification exists.
FSSAI has standards for five staples, and the nutrient list differs for each. This table is pure marks because it is precise and official:
| Staple food | What is added |
|---|---|
| Salt | Iodine. Double fortified salt adds iron as well |
| Wheat flour (atta and maida) | Iron, folic acid and vitamin B12 |
| Rice | Iron, folic acid and vitamin B12 |
| Edible oil | Vitamins A and D |
| Milk | Vitamins A and D |
Hold the pattern rather than the rows. The two fatty staples — oil and milk — carry the fat-soluble vitamins A and D. The two grain staples — wheat and rice — carry iron, folic acid and B12. Salt carries iodine. That is the hinge doing its work again: a fat-soluble vitamin is added to a fatty food because that is where it dissolves.
Fortified rice reaches people mainly through the public distribution system, which our capsule on FCI, buffer stocks and the PDS explains, and the grains themselves come from the procurement system covered in MSP and the 22 crops.
Anaemia Mukt Bharat: the 6x6x6 Strategy
India’s flagship programme against anaemia was launched in 2018 and is built on a “6x6x6” strategy — six interventions, six target groups and six institutional mechanisms. It runs through the National Health Mission and builds on the earlier National Iron Plus Initiative and the Weekly Iron Folic Acid Supplementation programme.
Jargon, defined once. Anaemia means the blood has too little haemoglobin, so it carries less oxygen. It is mainly caused by iron deficiency, but folate, vitamin B12 and vitamin A deficiencies contribute too — which is exactly why the fortification table above adds all of those to grain.
The six target groups follow the life cycle: pre-school children (6 to 59 months), children (5 to 9 years), adolescents (10 to 19 years), pregnant women, lactating women, and women of reproductive age (15 to 49 years).
And here is the detail worth remembering, because it is both memorable and askable: the iron and folic acid tablets are colour-coded by age group.
| Group | What they get |
|---|---|
| Children 6–59 months | IFA syrup, twice a week |
| Children 5–10 years | Pink tablet, weekly |
| Adolescents 10–19 years | Blue tablet, weekly |
| Non-pregnant, non-lactating women 20–49 years | Red tablet, weekly |
| Pregnant women | Daily IFA from the second trimester, and for six months after birth |
On the scale of the problem, NFHS-5 recorded 67.1% of children and 59.1% of adolescent girls as anaemic. Those figures move with each survey round, so quote them with the survey name.
Why a Reader Should Care
General Science carries real weight in SSC, Railways and State PCS papers, and vitamins are the most reliably repeated block inside it. The chemical-name and disease columns alone are worth several marks a year, and they never change.
The fortification and anaemia material is the modern half, and it crosses into current affairs, schemes and even the economy section. For the rest of the science track see our capsule on Scientific Instruments and Inventions, and for what is grown and why, Soils and Crops of India.
Today’s Current Affairs capsule is on the new PM Viksit Gram Swaraj Yojana, and it shares a quiet idea with this one. Fortification works because it adds something tiny to a system that already reaches everybody — and that is exactly the logic of a scheme that funds plans and audits rather than buildings.
Practice Questions
Q1. Which group of vitamins is stored in the body rather than passed out daily?
(a) B-complex and C (b) A, D, E and K (c) C and D only (d) All vitamins are stored
Answer: (b) A, D, E and K Because they are stored, an excess can build up and cause harm, which is not usually true of the water-soluble ones.
Q2. Scurvy is caused by the deficiency of
(a) Vitamin A (b) Vitamin B12 (c) Vitamin C (d) Vitamin D
Answer: (c) Vitamin C Its chemical name is ascorbic acid, and the word ascorbic literally means anti-scurvy.
Q3. Rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults are caused by a deficiency of the same vitamin. Which one?
(a) Vitamin K (b) Vitamin E (c) Vitamin B1 (d) Vitamin D
Answer: (d) Vitamin D The body can make this one in the skin using sunlight, which is why it is called the sunshine vitamin.
Q4. Under India’s fortification standards, which micronutrients are added to rice and wheat flour?
(a) Vitamins A and D (b) Iron, folic acid and vitamin B12 (c) Iodine and iron (d) Calcium and zinc
Answer: (b) Iron, folic acid and vitamin B12 The first option is what goes into oil and milk instead, because those two vitamins are fat-soluble and dissolve in a fatty food.
Q5. Under Anaemia Mukt Bharat, which colour tablet is given weekly to adolescents aged 10 to 19 years?
(a) Pink (b) Blue (c) Red (d) Green
Answer: (b) Blue Pink goes to children aged 5 to 10 and red to non-pregnant women aged 20 to 49, so the three colours map to three age bands.
30-Second Revision
- The hinge: A, D, E, K are fat-soluble — stored, not needed daily, can harm in excess. B-complex and C are water-soluble — flushed out, needed daily. That one split explains dosing schedules, overdose risk and which staple gets which nutrient.
- Disease pairs: C = scurvy; D = rickets in children, osteomalacia in adults; B1 = beriberi; B3 = pellagra; A = night blindness; K = poor clotting. B9 = folic acid, B12 = cyanocobalamin, both linked to anaemia.
- Fortification (FSS Regulations, 2018, +F logo): salt → iodine (double fortified adds iron); wheat and rice → iron, folic acid, B12; oil and milk → vitamins A and D. Anaemia Mukt Bharat (2018) is a 6x6x6 strategy with pink, blue and red tablets by age band.
Sources
- Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, Food Safety and Standards (Fortification of Foods) Regulations, 2018 and its compendium — the five fortified staples, the micronutrient added to each, double fortified salt and the +F logo.
- Press Information Bureau / National Health Mission, India’s Fight Against Anaemia — the Anaemia Mukt Bharat 6x6x6 strategy, the six target groups, the colour-coded iron and folic acid schedule, and the NFHS-5 prevalence figures.
- The vitamin chemical names and deficiency diseases are standard science-textbook material rather than press-release facts.
