Page "Dietary mineral" Paragraph 5

Some sources state that sixteen chemical elements are required to support human biochemical processes by serving structural and functional roles as well as electrolytes: However, as many as 26 elements in total ( including the common hydrogen, carbon, nitron and oxygen ) are suggested to be used by mammals, as a result of studies of biochemical, special uptake, and metabolic handling studies.

However, many of these additional elements have no well-defined biochemical function known at present.

Most of the known and suggested dietary elements are of relatively low atomic weight, and are reasonably common on land, or at least, common in the ocean ( iodine, sodium ):