What actually happens with vitamins is people love taking them (because they’re colorful and some of them are food preservatives) but there’s like no evidence they have health benefits.
I don't know, I was surprised to learn that my vitamin D was quite low, and I get a fair amount of sunlight each week, probably more than a lot of office workers.
Now that I take supplements though my levels have been fine. From what I have read, quite a few people fall into a similar bucket.
Honestly no, but I believe there is some research showing potential long term health benefits of avoiding low vitamin D. It's totally possible I'm wasting my money, but I'm happy with the potential benefit/cost ratio. I would gladly pay the price of some vitamins for even a small chance of avoiding significant health problems.
>It doesn't replace getting real sunlight though. Or if you're an Inuit, eating polar bear livers.
Not that I expect HN readers to likely end up in a situation where they have to decide whether to eat a polar bear liver, but that is definitely a part of the polar bear that no one should eat:
>...A polar bear’s liver contains an extremely high concentration of vitamin A. This is due to their vitamin A rich diet of fish and seals. The Eskimos have long been wary of eating the polar bear for this reason, but it’s something the early Artic explorers found out the hard way.
Ingesting the liver can cause vitamin A poisoning known as acute hypervitaminosis A. This results in vomiting, hair loss, bone damage and even death. So although actually capturing a polar bear may seem life threatening, it turns out that eating its liver is just as deadly.
Oh, I was thinking of animal fat in general. They have some minor genetic adaptations to get more vitamin D from it (since there's not much sunlight) and after moving away from the traditional high-fat diets now lack it as much as anyone else.
Now that I take supplements though my levels have been fine. From what I have read, quite a few people fall into a similar bucket.