The Vitamin D post brought this food facts table to mind! Good chart to print! Scroll to the bottom of the table to get some truth about water. Good info indeed!

Check out the benefits of our Big Bad Light in the sky (coming from some 93 million miles away…

Vitamin D was added to milk more than 50 years ago to successfully combat the common childhood bone disease rickets. But recent research indicates D is important to almost all body tissues. We are forever finding reasons to not get outside, but the primary source of D is The Sun. Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to increased risk of breast and prostate cancer, colon polyps, multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, muscle weakness — even depression and schizophrenia (insert my picture here).

The New England Journal of Medicine says adults and children need 800 to 1,000 IU (international unit) of vitamin D supplement daily if they’re not getting enough sun exposure. After the age of 70 the skin does not convert vitamin D effectively, so the needed supplemental amount would increase.

Vitamin D is produced when exposed skin has a photochemical reaction to ultraviolet light rays from the sun. Nearly all the vitamin D circulating in our bodies is made this way, with a typical white-skinned person in a bathing suit under a noonday summer sun in Canada producing about 10,000 IU in 15 to 20 minutes. Non-whites need about five times longer to make the same amount, because the melanin in their skin acts as a sunscreen against UVB rays. During the fall and winter, sunlight at Canadian latitudes is too weak to cause any vitamin D production.

Vitamin D synthesis in skin occurs only when the UV index is three or higher, roughly the period around noon from March to October in southern parts of the country. A rule of thumb is that if your shadow is longer than you are, the sunlight is not intense enough.

There are three sources of vitamin D: natural sunlight, fortification of dietary foods, particularly dairy products and some cereals and oily fish. I looked, but didn’t find any D benefits from beer…

Some of the very few foods that contain vitamin D are: cod liver oil (1,300 IU per tablespoon); wild salmon (1,000 IU per serving); farmed salmon (250 IU); sardines (600 IU); fortified milk or orange juice (100 IU); egg yolk (25 IU); fresh shiitake mushrooms and some organ meats (traces in both). Most multivitamins contain 400 IU. Over-the-counter pills and drops contain up to 1,000 IU.

Good reference stuff:
National Institute of Health
Vitamin D Council
Vitamin D and Bones