Vitamin D has been in the news. First a suggestion that adequate Vitamin D levels may help fight the swine flu.(read more.) The next story said levels of Vitamin D in American children were "shockingly low." (read more)
First a basic explanation of Vitamin D (not a vitamin.)
Ordinarily, I don't talk about single nutrients. People eat food, not nutrients. But vitamin D is the latest "hot" nutrient, the one advertised on banners across the fronts of cereal boxes. And it has its own advocacy groups who argue that vitamin D deficiency is epidemic in America and everyone should be taking supplements. The pushing of any one nutrient always makes me uneasy, mainly because we need all of them all the time.
But Vitamin D is so weird, poses such difficult dilemmas, and it's so scientifically uncertain and controversial that it's worth a discussion.
Vitamin D is weird because it is not a vitamin. Vitamins are chemicals found in foods that our bodies cannot make. But hardly any natural foods contain this particular chemical. Plants have none. Meat has little. Wild fatty fish like salmon have reasonable amounts, but farmed fish have much less. Fish liver has enormous amounts, but nobody eats it. We call this chemical vitamin D only because it was discovered at the same time as other vitamins.
Not-a-vitamin D is actually a hormone produced by the action of sunlight on skin. Like other hormones, it has many roles in the body, not all of them well understood. Its best known function is to regulate bone mineralization. Without enough of this hormone, bones do not harden and children develop the bowed legs characteristic of rickets (in adults, this is called osteomalacia). Because receptors for this hormone are found in many body tissues, scientists suspect it has other physiological functions and are actively investigating these possibilities.
Break through in new way to get Vitamin D.
There are two ways to get vitamin D. You can sit in the sun (sans sunscreen for a few minutes) and soak up the UVB rays, which our skin cells use to make the vitamin. Or you can get it from food. Unfortunately, few foods are rich in D: fatty fish, such as mackerel, sardines and salmon; egg yolks; and D-fortified foods including milk and cereals. We can now add one more food—mushrooms—to the list of vitamin-D-rich foods.
“Mushrooms contain a compound called ergosterol that gets converted to vitamin D when exposed to UVB light,” explains Tara McHugh, Ph.D., research leader at the Western Regional Research Center of the Agricultural Research Service. This conversion is similar to the one that creates vitamin D in our skin. Mushrooms grow in the dark, so theoretically you could force them to make vitamin D by exposing them to sunlight, but it would take a long time. Instead a new technique exposes mushrooms to high-intensity artificial UV rays for a few minutes (think tanning bed).(from Eating Well.)
Monterey Mushrooms launched Sun Bella Mushrooms this year.
"Now Monterey Mushrooms offers a safer and more nutritious alternative. Monterey’s Sun-Bella brand mushrooms. Whenever you buy Sun-Bella brand mushrooms, you will be assured of getting a minimum of 100% of the Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) as established by the FDA. Mushrooms react to sunlight in the same way as humans and produce a totally natural form of vitamin D. As such they are totally safe and good for you. A single 3 ounce serving will provide at least 100% of the RDI with no fat and no cholesterol.
Vitamin D has been linked to quite a few other health benefits in addition to bone health. Recent research has shown vitamin D to be associated with a healthy heart. Early studies have also shown a possible link between low levels of vitamin D and cancers such as colon, breast, pancreatic, and lung. One article even called vitamin D the “possible nutrient of the decade”.
Monterey Mushrooms has spent over a year developing its Sun Bella mushroom through a collaborative research program with the USDA. There have also been several publications put out by the USDA as well as jointly with Monterey concerning the development of vitamin D within mushrooms.
Many studies have also suggested that infants and adolescents need far more Vitamin D than is currently recommended. There has been a lot of discussion at the FDA about increasing the RDI from its current level of 400 up to 1,000 IU’s per day. " from their web site read more
Other good food sources for Vitamin D include:
Nutrient-dense, fatty fish like mackerel and sardines are good sources of vitamin D. Egg yolks, fortified organic milk and other dairy products, and some organ meats (like liver) are also reasonably good natural sources of D. Because vitamin D is still somewhat of a mystery, we’re not sure which co-factors are important for its absorption, but we can surmise they are most fully present in wholesome food.(read more.)
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