What Is Vitamin A Good For? It Turns Out a Lot of Things

Vitamin D, vitamin C, calcium, iron, folic acid … when you start breaking food down into its component parts, it's hard to keep the building blocks of a healthy diet straight. The good news: Vitamin A isn't one of the nutrients you need to worry about, because almost everyone in the developed world already gets a sufficient amount through their diet (with the exception of some pre-term infants and people with cystic fibrosis).

"Vitamin A is abundant in fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, meats (especially liver), and seafood," Mascha Davis, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Culver City, California says. In fact, it's so unlikely that people in countries like United States will face vitamin A issues that the World Health Organization (WHO) doesn't recommend supplementation to anyone, except pregnant women who live in places that are vitamin A deficient.

But even if you don't have to worry about getting enough vitamin A in your diet, it's still important to know what it does in the body - here's what we know about it.