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The Food Chain

Factual: Food & Drink

Examining what it takes to put food on your plate

The Food Chain examines the business, science and cultural significance of food, and what it takes to put food on your plate.

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The Food Chain: Is it time to add vitamin D to food?

Magazines & Reviews

Is it time to add vitamin D to food?

11/03/2021 GMT

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Is it time to add vitamin D to food?

Coronavirus has strengthened calls for action on the 'sunshine vitamin' problem

Coronavirus has strengthened calls for action on the 'sunshine vitamin' problem.

Vitamin D keeps our bones and muscles strong, and now there's some evidence it could help protect us from Covid-19. With many of us deficient in the 'sunshine vitamin' could food fortification be the best way to ensure we're getting enough? 

Emily Thomas hears how enriched milk and margarines have helped to almost completely eliminate vitamin D deficiencies in Finland, and how plans to fortify flour could prevent devastating bone diseases like rickets in Mongolia. 

As more countries are urged to act, we ask whose responsibility fortification should be - governments' or the food industry's? Plus, why is it so hard to get enough vitamin D from sunlight or our regular diets, and is it possible to get too much?

If you would like to get in touch with the show please email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk

Producers: Simon Tulett and Sarah Stolarz

Contributors:

Kevin Cashman, professor of food and health at University College Cork, Republic of Ireland;
Amaraa Bor, operations manager at the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation, Mongolia;
Christel Lamberg-Allardt, professor of food and nutrition at the University of Helsinki, Finland

(Picture: An optical illusion of a boy 'eating' the sun. Credit: Getty Images/BBC)

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