Vitamin E is one of the most important phytonutrients in edible oils. It consists of eight naturally occuring isomers, a family of four tocopherols (alpha, beta, gamma and delta) and four tocotrienols (alpha, beta, gamma and delta) homologues.

All the eight isomers share some important traits:

• The head, or chroman ring in technical term

• The tail, which is called the phytyl tail for tocopherols

• The active group on the head of the molecule, which is called the hydroxy group