How To Get More Vitamin D From Your Diet

We mention on our other pages about how to supplement the right amount of vitamin D for your health. With all this focus on supplementation, some people may wonder… is there no way of having enough vitamin D naturally through your diet?

The problem with this approach is that:

1) There aren’t that many foods that contain vitamin D.

2) These foods don’t contain much vitamin D.

3) These foods aren’t a regular part of most people’s diet.

Let us give some examples (Bear in mind from our article on vitamin D that people typically need 1885 units to 6235 units depending on their weight):

Farmed trout = 388 units/100grams (1)

Tuna = 404 units/100grams (1)

Grey sole = 56 units/100grams (1)

Cod = 104 units/100grams (1)

Mackerel = 24 units/100grams (1) or 360 units (2) depending on the source you look at

Herring = 1628 units/100grams (3) (rare to find fresh herring in UK supermarkets, usually comes pickled and packaged with lots of additives)

Halibut (Greenland) = 600 units/100grams (4)

Catfish (wild, channel) = 500 units/100grams (5) (never seen in a UK supermarket)

Oysters (eastern, wild) = 320 units/100grams (about 7 oysters) (6)

Sardines (Atlantic, canned, drained) = 272 units/100grams (7)

Salmon (farmed – most salmon people buy is farmed) = 240 units/100grams (1)

Eel = 932 units/100grams (rare to find eel in a UK supermarket) (8)

As you can see, you’d need to eat quite a bit of fish to make up your bare minimum for vitamin D.

Even if you did eat that much fish, that can be problematic. We’ll mention why in a second.

Bear in mind farmed salmon has 4x less vitamin D than wild caught. So wild caught salmon can have 980 units/100grams (1). So, a 150gram fillet of wild salmon can be a valuable contribution towards vitamin D levels and provide you with about as much vitamin D as the ThinkPharm Formula.

There’s a few problems with consuming that much wild salmon though (and fish in general):

1) It’s expensive to eat that much every day. £3.75 for 150grams of wild salmon from Sainsbury’s.

2) Fish isn’t as healthy as it used to be, with microplastics and other pollutants entering our ocean.

3) It’s not as reliable a source as a supplement. Needs cooking and preparation. Can be smelly. Pills are simpler to take.

4) Slow build-up of mercury is a concern if you’re eating that much fish on a daily basis. One of our staff members began eating 200grams of farmed salmon on a daily basis for a year. Prior to this, fish intake was quite sporadic. After a year they tested their mercury levels and they came back on the high side. Any urinary mercury level above 0.8µg/g is deemed higher than what is normal. His level was 0.65µg/g. Salmon’s mercury level is thought to be low to intermediate. This means trying to get your vitamin D from other fish like tuna (which is known to be quite high in mercury) could be quite problematic indeed. Especially since we’d need 386grams of tuna to get the same amount of vitamin D as what is found in the ThinkPharm Formula!

So, let’s look at some other sources of vitamin D (9):

Duck Eggs = 28.3 units/70gram egg

Whole milk = 2 units per 100ml. People will sometimes say that milk is a source of vitamin D. Clearly this is not reflected in the data. Only milk artificially fortified with vitamin D will be a good source.

Eggs (Chicken) = 49.2 units/50gram egg (large egg)

As you may recall from our other pages on vitamin D, our formula contains 1560 units of vitamin D because we believe this is the minimum people need, with many needing much more (boron increases vitamin D levels even during wintertime which is why we need to reduce the vitamin D level a bit).

As you can see from the above figures, it is quite tricky to get 1560 units of vitamin D through foods alone. Are you really going to eat 31 large eggs? Or 78 litres of milk?

Why is it so difficult to get our vitamin D through foods? This is because we aren’t really meant to be relying on food for our vitamin D. We produce vitamin D mainly from our skin’s exposure to UV light. In our evolutionary past, humans would have received plenty of vitamin D from sunlight exposure. Most people don’t get enough sunlight these days, which is why many of us need to supplement.

There are other things we should be doing with our diet to help keep good vitamin D levels. Low levels of dietary calcium may increase the rate at which we use up vitamin D.

Dr Chris Masterjohn PhD in Nutritional Sciences has written about how low calcium intake is very likely to be a potential cause of low vitamin D in some cases. This is thought to be because vitamin D is converted to calcitriol (its active version) to help with absorbing the lower amounts of calcium in the diet (10). As he describes, there is definitive proof of concept in rats but a lack of enough research trials conducted in humans (10).

We still think this suggests it’s important to make sure we have enough calcium in our diet. In fact, in certain mouse experiments, the mice who lacked the ability to use vitamin D properly didn’t develop problems if their calcium and lactose intake was high (11). This may explain why in many Nordic countries, the people are relatively healthy, in spite of their lack of sunlight exposure. They consume quite a bit of dairy. They also tend to eat a lot of fish which offsets their lack of sunlight.

As we have mentioned on our other pages, boron is important for avoiding the breakdown of vitamin D (the ThinkPharm Formula supplies boron) and zinc is important for converting vitamin D to its active version. Magnesium is also important for converting vitamin D to the active version (mentioned in our second page on vitamin K). This list is not exhaustive. Science probably has yet to discover all the nutrients that can affect vitamin D levels, breakdown and conversion to the active version.

If you want to learn more about the vitamin and mineral content of foods, you can see the original data at https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/ or https://nutritiondata.self.com/ (which takes its data from the FDC website and make it more easily accessible). 

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Disclaimer: Food supplements are intended to correct nutritional deficiencies, maintain an adequate intake of certain nutrients, or to support specific physiological functions. The ThinkPharm Formula (or any other food supplement) is not a medicine and therefore cannot and does not claim to treat or prevent disease. All content on this website is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. None of the scientific studies quoted on this website qualify as proof or implication that ThinkPharm Health's supplements treat or prevent disease. Findings of scientific studies do not always represent reality. It is always difficult for scientific studies to reach accurate conclusions regarding nutrition and its relationship to diseases. Please consult your healthcare professional before making any significant changes to your diet and lifestyle. ThinkPharm Health is not liable for risks or issues associated with using or acting on information from this website.