Friday 17 February 2017

D Day?


A recent meta-analysis (where a collection of studies are combined for analysis) has confirmed that daily addition of a moderate dose of the 'sunshine vitamin D' provides some protection against cold and influenza infections (news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/02/study-confirms-vitamin-d-protects-against-cold-and-flu/). The evidence seems pretty convincing and people have speculated that it would be beneficial to add the vitamin to certain foods especially for folk who don't get much skin exposure to UV light (the radiation causes the vitamin to be manufactured by the skin). So people living near the poles, who have pigmented skin or who largely cover their skin are unlikely to get sufficient vitamin in their diet (especially if they don't eat much fish or certain mushrooms). Given the fuss initially caused by adding fluoride to water to provide protection from tooth decay, I suspect that people would want to be given a clearly-labelled choice (in spite of accepting the addition of iodine to table salt).

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