The Institute of Medicine's Food and Nutrition Board has set the daily adequate intake at 200 International Units (IUs) for people 1-50 years old, 400 IUs for people 50-70 years old and 600 for people older than 70. Those recommendations are "totally arbitrary" and far too low, given recent findings about vitamin D, says Bruce Hollis. He's a nutritional biochemist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, USA, who has built his career on vitamin D. "I assure you that during the next cycle of the Food and Nutrition Board in 2007, there will be dramatic changes."

At least 150 years ago, a teaspoon of cod liver oil was given to children to prevent and treat rickets. Early in the 20th century, scientists discovered that it was the vitamin D in that foul-tasting elixir that fortified the bones. Because a teaspoon happened to contain about 400 lUs of vitamin D, the federal panel adopted it as the standard, Hollis adds. Until "If they'd used haddock liver oil, which has 700 IUs of vitamin D, that would have been the standard." Hollis and others say there are indications that many Americans aren't getting enough vitamin D. A couple of paediatric clinics in North Carolina, USA, found that during the 1990s, rickets increased threefold -and more than fourfold among African-American babies. Several clinical studies show that elderly people given 800 lUs a day had fewer fractures, lower blood pressure, better balance and better muscle tone than people given a placebo, according to Reinhold Vieth, a biochemist at the University of Toronto. The connection between vitamin D and cancer is more circumstantial, but intriguing. Cancers of the breast, prostate and large bowel occur more commonly as one moves away from the equator. The theory is that people have less sun exposure. Clothing is one factor. The other is that in some places, the sun is too weak to trigger vitamin D synthesis from November to February.

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