3 ms·

In the USA we fortify milk with Vitamin-D too, but only a small amount - each 8oz cup (240ml) has 15% (3mcg) of your recommended daily allowance. There's resea

In the USA we fortify milk with Vitamin-D too, but only a small amount - each 8oz cup (240ml) has 15% (3mcg) of your recommended daily allowance. There's research that suggests that the RDA is way too low, plus many adults don't drink a lot of milk, certainly not enough to make significant impact on their vitamin-D intake. https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/infantandtoddlernutrition/foods-and-drinks/cows-milk-and-milk-alternatives.html https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/infantandtoddlernutrition/food... https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fortified-milk#3 https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fortified-milk#3

conistonwater 6y ago
The last time I looked into this what I got was that there'd been a statistical error made in the process of determining the RDA, and it was just never corrected. The RDA is the amount that guarantees that only a certain fraction of the population has a deficiency, if everybody eats that much, but they calculated it so that only a certain fraction of population studies would find a deficiency on average. Furthermore, dietary vitamin D is absorbed rather poorly, so the amount of it you have to eat is immense compared to going out into the sun, resulting in really high "recommended" RDAs---it's the blood concentration divided by sensitivity but the measured sensitivity is surprisingly low. [1] [1] A Statistical Error in the Estimation of the Recommended Dietary Allowance for Vitamin D, Paul J. Veugelers* and John Paul Ekwaru https://dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fnu6104472 https://dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fnu6104472
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
Also, isn't milk consumption unevenly distributed across the whole population? E.g. those with an Asian background I would expect to consume less milk than the population average.
- Johnny555 6y ago
  True, I think food supplementation is hard to do in general since the dose needs to be appropriate for anyone that may consume it, with age ranging from infant to elderly.

conistonwater 6y ago

The last time I looked into this what I got was that there'd been a statistical error made in the process of determining the RDA, and it was just never corrected. The RDA is the amount that guarantees that only a certain fraction of the population has a deficiency, if everybody eats that much, but they calculated it so that only a certain fraction of population studies would find a deficiency on average. Furthermore, dietary vitamin D is absorbed rather poorly, so the amount of it you have to eat is immense compared to going out into the sun, resulting in really high "recommended" RDAs---it's the blood concentration divided by sensitivity but the measured sensitivity is surprisingly low. [1] [1] A Statistical Error in the Estimation of the Recommended Dietary Allowance for Vitamin D, Paul J. Veugelers* and John Paul Ekwaru https://dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fnu6104472 https://dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fnu6104472

Florin_Andrei 6y ago

Also, isn't milk consumption unevenly distributed across the whole population? E.g. those with an Asian background I would expect to consume less milk than the population average.

Johnny555 6y ago
True, I think food supplementation is hard to do in general since the dose needs to be appropriate for anyone that may consume it, with age ranging from infant to elderly.