A video worth knowing

Why vitamin F didn't keep its name

SciShow's Hank Green untangles an alphabet shaped by discoveries, mistaken identities and nutrients that lost their vitamin status.

Channel:

SciShow Story of November 11, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? 919,764 views so far, and here is what is inside it.

Why Is There No Vitamin F?

Things we can learn from the video

Press to jump

3:05Vitamins are essential nutrients that our bodies cannot adequately produce for themselves.
4:59Missing B numbers belong to substances that lost their vitamin status as scientists learned more.
8:45Humans cannot make their own vitamin C; Green also examines claims about its effect on colds.
10:17Vitamin D is conditionally essential because sunlight allows the body to synthesize it.
12:40The missing-letter answer arrives: supposed vitamins were dropped or renamed as their identities became clearer.
14:07Green notes that no new vitamins have been added to the list since around the 1940s.

Vitamin B has a whole numbered family, while F seems to have vanished from the shelf. In SciShow's "Why Is There No Vitamin F?", Hank Green explains why the vitamin alphabet looks less like an orderly system than a history of scientists changing their minds.

The answer to the title is reclassification. Vitamin F was a name given to essential fatty acids, which belong among fats rather than vitamins. Other letters disappeared or changed names as researchers worked out what the substances actually were. The gaps aren't missing nutritional instructions.

The B family has its own administrative casualties. Several substances initially assigned B numbers didn't meet the requirements for vitamin status, leaving holes in the sequence. Green puts it this way: "These are the Plutos of the vitamins, and you've never cared."

Underlying the naming muddle is a useful question: what makes something a vitamin at all? Green explains the need for essential nutrients that our bodies cannot make for themselves, then reaches an awkward exception. Vitamin D is conditionally essential because sunlight enables our bodies to produce it. Humans, by contrast, cannot synthesize their own vitamin C.

The episode includes a sponsored gift-shopping segment between the B and C sections. Its science tour has drawn about 920,000 views in a week, though the attraction here is the explanation rather than an unusual viewing surge.

Viewers are making jokes about the crowded B family and recalling the unmistakable taste of childhood Flintstones vitamins. Green ends his tour with a reminder that the alphabet has been settled for a surprisingly long time: no new vitamins have joined the list since around the 1940s.

Published on Trari

Where next?

Also in Science and experimentsA video worth knowingKurzgesagt asks when, exactly, a person diesIts animated explainer follows the body after the heartbeat stops, from failing neurons to immune cells still fighting near the ten-minute mark.Channel: Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · Story of November 11, 2026

A different discovery todayVideo taking off 49x its usual first dayWomen in ITV's Power and Silence say David Walliams pursued them as teenagersTwo of the women were 15 when they met him. Walliams denies all wrongdoing, saying in a statement: "I am not a sexual predator".Channel: ITV News · Story of November 11, 2026

What viewers say

"They assumed". You know what happens when you assume?

You end up accidentally naming a dozen variant micronutrients as "Vitamin B" of course!
@ScaerieTaleSee it on YouTube
I was today years old when I learned that the word vitamin is not a combination of vital and mineral
@Paul_PauIsonSee it on YouTube
Even years later i can manifest the taste of Flintstones vitamins in my head
@RilesthegamergeekSee it on YouTube

3 more comments

00:24 there is a whole HIVE of BEE vitamins
@kewakl8891See it on YouTube
On behalf of biochemists, I apologize for constantly discovering stuff that makes everything a big hassle.
@bioalkemistiSee it on YouTube
2:10 I wish my name was as cool as Casimir Funk
@clairekopenhafer8272See it on YouTube

Public comments from the video's page on YouTube