Girls aged 11-12 aren’t getting enough vitamin D and need more than recent recommendations have suggested, a study published this month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports.

“In the new study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Kevin Cashman, head of the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at University College Cork in Ireland, and colleagues found that teen girls need a vitamin D intake of about 750 IU per day to have levels in their blood that allow for healthy bone growth,” Reuters News service reported.

Both the report and the study acknowledge that sun exposure is the primary source of natural vitamin D, and that because people avoid the sun, they aren’t getting the natural D they need.

“Complicating the matter is that the girls in the study all lived in Finland or Denmark, two northern countries with very little sunlight in the winter. And even when it’s sunny, the angle of the sun makes the light weaker. As a result, some researchers say it’s not clear whether the new finding applies to girls in the US,” Reuters reported.

But American studies – including a study of school-aged girls in Maine – have shown that American girls too aren’t getting enough of the sunshine vitamin.

Click here to read the Reuters report.