"I'm fine!"
Sun avoiders and dark-skinned people absorb less UV radiation. People in the northern two-thirds of the country make little or no vitamin D in winter, and older people make less vitamin D in their skin and are less able to convert it into the hormone that the body uses. In addition, babies fed just breast milk consume little vitamin D unless given a supplement.
On the first sentence I'm being pedantic- it's not worth writing a post about on its own, but it is worth pointing out that 'sun avoiders' may absorb UV radiation just fine, they just don't receive it if they stay out of the sun.
The last sentence, about exclusively breastfed babies not consuming much vitamin D unless given a supplement, is patently false. Babies of mothers who aren't deficient in vitamin D will consume plenty of the vitamin and aren't at risk for deficiency during the first two months of life. After that, to maintain sufficient levels they require only 2 hours per week of sunshine. Geez. The only time a breastfeeding baby won't receive enough vitamin D is if the mother's level of exposure to the sun is minimal and her diet contains insufficient vitamin D to compensate for this, plus the baby is never exposed to sun. There are enough malevolent forces out there undermining breastfeeding as the best and healthiest method of feeding a baby without having the forces of the ignorant join them and adding to the burden.
A suggestion to Jane E. Brody: get your facts right before publishing an article in one of the world's biggest papers.
1 comment:
How utterly ridiculous. Anyone with half an ounce of common sense who stops to think about it for half a second must realise breastfed babies *can't* need supplements, otherwise the human race would not have survived the millions of years before vitamin supplements were invented. Duh.
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