Have you ever wondered how the good guys always manage to get the best of their villainous foes in books and films? According to a new paper in the Medical Journal of Australia it has nothing to do with justice or karma – it’s because of vitamin D!

A fun new study reported by NPR, The Smithsonian and more theorized that fictional villains can’t defeat heroes because they are weakened by not getting enough of the sunshine vitamin. Joseph and Nicholas Hopkinson examined and rated the habits of characters from the J.R.R. Tolkien novel The Hobbit and found that “the vitamin D score was significantly higher among the good and victorious characters than the evil and defeated ones.”

“Systematic textual analysis of The Hobbit supports our initial hypothesis that the triumph of good over evil may be assisted to some extent by the poor diet and lack of sunlight experienced by the evil characters,” the authors wrote. “[…]Sun avoidance is a recurring theme among the evil characters.”

Click here to view the study.

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