A government-commissioned report issued Tuesday on vitamin D in North America contained a strange contradiction: saying in one sentence that the population is getting enough vitamin D, but conspicuously underplaying the fact that they also recommend tripling the daily vitamin D recommendation for young people.
In other words: Why the increase if, as you say, everyone is already getting enough?
Regardless, the overall message has the vitamin D research community outraged — the report claiming that vitamin D deficiency is not an issue in the United States and Canada and that vitamin D levels can be maintained with diet alone. Supplements and natural vitamin D from sun exposure are not needed, the panel maintains.
The report, issued by a panel of mainly nutrition and oncology scientists hand-picked by the non-profit Institute of Medicine, is used by governments to create dietary recommendations. It is non-binding, but has been followed by the government in the past. The report stated:
Those conclusions fly in the face of standards adopted by virtually the entire vitamin D research community, which had hoped the panel would consider thousands of studies and increase recommendations to:
The IOM panel stated clearly that current evidence only establishes that vitamin D is necessary for bone health and calcium absorption — rejecting as “inconclusive” thousands of studies showing that vitamin D regulates cell growth in the body and that vitamin D levels of 40-60 ng/ml correspond to lower risk for most forms of cancer and for heart disease or multiple sclerosis.
“Widespread vitamin D deficiency is not a public health problem in the United States and Canada,” Catherine Ross, a Penn State University professor of nutrition who served as the review committee chair, said in this morning’s press conference.
The Vitamin D research community is outraged at headlines that have already popped up because of the report. And it appears the panel itself was naïve in how their report would be received. A New York Times story and headline seemed to indicate that vitamin D supplements are no longer necessary. “That’s not the message we would have hoped for in the headline,” Clinton said in this morning’s press conference.
What did the panel do wrong?
“What this committee is saying is that nature is wrong,” Smart Tan Vice President Joseph Levy said. “Natural vitamin D levels are 40-60 ng/ml and they are attempting to marginalize thousands of studies conducted in this decade by vitamin D researchers worldwide.”
Most of the vitamin D research community felt the report would raise the D recommendations from 400 IU to 1,000 IU. Who benefits from the committee’s surprisingly conservative conclusions?
And questions that remain unanswered: If Vitamin D deficiency is not a problem:
We will continue to follow this story. For now, if you are asked questions about vitamin D we recommend the following answers:
Here are links to coverage of today’s report: