Riboflavin

Riboflavin is one of the B vitamins (vitamin B₂). The B and C vitamins are the vitamins that dissolve in water. A healthy person's gut can easily take riboflavin from food and pass it on to the blood for the body to use. The body needs the B vitamins to get energy from food. Without riboflavin and the other B vitamins people's bodies cannot use fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Light can break down riboflavin molecules into other molecules that the body cannot use.

If anyone eats too much riboflavin, the gut^[1] does not take up enough to make a person sick, but an injection with too much riboflavin can make one sick.^[1] The kidneys take riboflavin out of the blood. They put it in the urine^[2] to get it out of the body. If there is much riboflavin in the urine, the urine becomes bright, yellow. Vitamin pills, or a meal with a lot of liver or egg white turns the urine yellow because these foods put so much riboflavin into the blood.

People may get very sick when their food does not have enough riboflavin. Adding extra riboflavin help. Baby foods, breakfast cereals, pasta, sauces, fruit drinks, and foods such as cheese that are made from milk may have extra riboflavin added. This is called fortification. To make Vitamin B2 for vitamin pills or to add to foods, industrial companies grow special yeasts, other fungi, or bacteria that make a lot of riboflavin.^[3]

These foods have a lot of riboflavin:

• Milk
• cheese
• leafy green vegetables
• liver
• beans, peas and soybeans ^[4]
• yeast
• almonds
• asparagus
• bananas
• okra
• chard
• cottage cheese
• yogurt
• meat
• eggs
• fish

• Jane Higdon, "Riboflavin", Micronutrient Information Center, Linus Pauling Institute