All milks are not fortified equally

By 21. October 2014Blog, Health, Nutrition

Parents of children drinking non cow’s milk beware! Are your children getting enough Vitamin D?

That was the question some researchers from Canada wanted to answer. The reason to ask the question is because cow’s milk in North America has to be fortified with Vitamin D while other milks do not.

Over 2800 children aged between 1 and 6 years of age were recruited for the study. According to the results drinking both non cow’s milk and cow’s milk was associated with a lower level of Vitamin D than cow’s milk alone and those drinking only non cow’s milk had a higher risk of being Vitamin D deficient.

So there you go, if you live in North America and give your children non cow’s milk you may want to make sure they get a good dose of the vitamin in another way, such as fatty fish, tuna, some mushrooms or eggs.

Sunlight also stimulates the body to make Vitamin D but be aware that too much sun is also not good…

If all else fails you could always give them a vitamin pill.

The paper was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.