I live in a northern state, where summer only lasts a month or two. Where I feel like a lizard come march, scurrying from sunbeam to sunbeam while the air is still cold. And, I mourn at the first site of falling leaves in early August.
I’ve heard living here puts me at high risk for vitamin D deficiency. We simply don’t get enough sun, they say. Or maybe it’s that we don’t get outside enough. Could be my high-carb diet doesn’t leave space enough for vitamin D to take root.
Whatever the reason, this article brings the vitamin D deficiency debate to the forefront. And, like the egg debate, no one can quite decide if it’s good or bad, if statistics are true or false, or whether or not we should run to the nearest Vitamin Shoppe.
I’m a pessimist when it comes to health and statistics or research on what I should eat or avoid. I live in the city. I’m not a self-sufficient farmer growing all my own in organic soil, raising free-range chickens or grass-fed cattle. I assume I’m ingesting all sorts of carcinogens that filter out all the good stuff.
I never know what to do when the current “breaking news” hits my screen. I read it, but unless I win the lottery soon or come into a large plot of land and the equipment to work it, I’m stuck. Stuck shopping at the large chain grocery stores that buy corporate farm products and factory processed meats and sell them at a discount that I can’t afford to ignore.
Sure, I can run out and buy a load of vitamin D. I hear it’s cheap right now. Maybe I should run out and buy in bulk, before the pharmeceutical companies hone in on the critical levels of deficiency. But, as soon as I get home and unpack my boxes of D, I’ll open my laptop and read another article about another study that suggests everyone got a little too excited the first time around.
