I asked a nutritionist friend about the Mead Johnson Vit D formula.. 
She sent me this response.
Jan Cornfoot, Brisbane.
Editor, Birth Issues
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Just what is the prevalence of rickets in the USA?

I predict we'll be seeing the return of ideopathic hypercalcaemia from toxic levels of Vit D just as existed in the UK in the 1950s. 
Like many nutritionists I am very relaxed about eating and am a bit of a gourmet, I never fussed about my children's eating habits. However while doing a project on rickets in British Asians during my masters  (where surprise surprise I found that poverty and inner city living are the key factors) I casually worked out what my family might eat from our usual diet. To my horror I did some calculations and discovered that if Vit D fortified margarines/yoghurts/milks/cereals were included in the daily diet (which they were), we might be reaching toxic levels (which vary according to each individual) . Indeed the british DOH had ruled out further fortification of foods becasue of this and also becasue excess Vit D was associated with CVD. In the USA milk was the vehicle of  D fortification (not in UK) and I speculated that falls in heart disease might be due to reduced whole milk drinking due to public health campiagns to reduce total fat intake.
I actually changed the family shopping and started to make home made yoghurt and avoid fortified cereals. I still scan labels for Vit D and try to avoid it. 
One reseacher (was it David Fraser, a brit who went to Oz) believed that all dietary Vit D is a risk and that it should only be used for deep sea divers or arctic explorers. After all it is not really a vitamin but a hormone triggered by sunlight. 

I am still very sceptical about this new 'scare'. Why are women in the US delivering babies with low levels themselves? If women are born with replete stores, there will be enough for the baby for 6 months. Also you can take the baby outside regularly without risking skin cancer. It needs the fresh air anyway. I can see that we might prevent a few babies, whose mothers stay indoors all the time or wear purdah, from rickets (which heals very quickly in breastfed babies anyway) but we'll also start seeing nodular bones, worse complications and as in the 50s , there could be deaths. Will there be a giant warning on the MJ preparation? Will there be a warning to stop using it as soon as a baby starts on commercial solid foods or infant formula or regular milk which are all fortified in the US I think. 
Yes synthetic Vit D can be useful but fortified margarine was not the only reason for the decline of rickets in the UK during and after WW2. Overall adequate nutrition, health surveillance, better housing and the annual seaside holiday all contibuted. Regular cows' milk was never fortified here and the Asian immigrants who were getting rickets in the 1970s tended to feed their babies with it, never went out in sunlight (becasue of culture and some say fear of racism) and lived in the dark gloomy slum housing that the British had vacated to move to airy new towns and leafy suburbs. 
I think in my project I recommended putting UV glass in the windows of all ante-natal clinics, but the pigs are not flying either. 

This is all part of the magic bullet approach to health. The bullets sometimes ricochet.

Pass this on if you think anyone might be interested.


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