The IOM concluded most Americans can obtain an adequate amount
of vitamin D from the diet and vitamin D deficiency is not as
common a problem as has been suggested. To obtain 600 IU of
vitamin D/d from dietary sources a child or adult would need to
ingest wild caught salmon at least 5 d a week or drink or eat
six servings of dairy fortified with vitamin D. The CDC reported
that more than 30% of children and adults in the US are vitamin
D deficient. Unless you have a granulomatous disorder there is
no downside to increasing your vitamin D. Who could have guessed
that the sun-derived hormone vitamin D that has been produced in
life forms for more than 500 million years would gain such
attention and such controversy today? In 1997 the Institute of
Medicine (IOM) recommended that all children and adults up to
the age of 50 only required 200 IU of vitamin D/d to satisfy
their bodies’ requirement for bone health.1 The 200 IU comes
from studies in the 1940s demonstrating that 100 IU of vitamin
D/d was all that was r