In my opinion, vitamin D supplementation is like DHA supplementation.  It is
research used to market a product.  The supplementation industry has become a
billion dollar industry.  Convince people they are deficient and then you
have them hooked on a product for life.

One has to wonder why the AAP so readily reports the deficiencies of
breastfeeding.  Yet, never discusses the problems inherent in feeding infants
artificial milks.  The following patent called, "Refrigeration-shelf stable
ultra-pasteurized or pasterized infant formula." discusses the difficulties
of adding vitamins and minerals to infant formula.  It is rather remarkable
that the overdosing of vitamins because of shelf degradation is considered an
economic problem for the industry and no mention is made of the possible
health outcomes for infants who might get an overdose of these
vitamins--particularly the fat soluble vitamins like vitamin D.  According to
a textbook by Sizer & Whitney on Nutrition, vitamin D "is the most
potentially toxic of all vitamins." and "The likeliest victims of vitamin D
poisoning are infants."  "Ingestion of as little as four to five times the
recommended daily intake can cause toxicity
symptoms." Yet, the manufacturing practices of the infant formula industry
has made a product that could be extremely risky in order to extend the
shelf-life of the product.

I find it interesting that the nutrition textbook I have states that because
vitamin D is synthesized by sunlight, one could say that in a sense vitamin D
is not an essential nutrient.  Yet the marketplace with the help of the AAP
will create the belief in some mothers that supplementation is required.
Does the AAP create more health by such statements or does it help the
supplement industry make another billion dollars this year?  Valerie W.
McClain, IBCLC

patent # 6039985

"An infant formula which contains all the essential macronutrients and
micronutrients, have heretofore been available only in shelf-stable
sterilized products. Sterilized products are generally sold in hermetically
sealed containers such as cans and are intended to have a long room
temperature shelf-life. Table 2 lists several commercially available
shelf-stable sterilized infant formulas. Such formulas require expensive
processing steps which must be carefully controlled to properly remove
microorganisms and bacterial enzymes. As will be discussed further herein,
sterilization processes, due to the severity of the heat treatment can cause
undesirable physical, chemical, enzymatic and microbial changes which
deleteriously affect the final product.

Moreover, although such sterilized products are often marketed as
"ready-to-feed" (RTF), they are typically stored at room temperature, and
enzymatic reactions still occur, albeit slower, during room temperature
storage of sterilized products. Such reactions can result in a host of
undesirable defects, such as the destruction of vitamins which are necessary
to the integrity of the overall product. Since sterilized products are
designed to have up to one and a half (11/2) year of room temperature
shelf-life, such products will have a different actual content of degradable
micro nutrients (vitamins) in the early part of its shelf-life as compared to
the latter part. Thus, an infant will obtain a different and unknown amount
of vitamins depending on when the sterilized product is consumed.

To account for this degradative process during long-term shelf-life,
manufacturers of sterilized infant formulas often include up to 50% to 70%
more of a given vitamin than would normally be included to account for the
inherent degradation loss and to ensure the product is likely to contain at
least the labeled amount of nutrients at the end of its shelf-life. Such
large overdosing results in an imbalance in the taste of the product,
particularly if consumed in the early stages of its shelf-life. Moreover, the
cost factor of including such large overdoses is considerable. In addition to
the high cost of sterilization, and increased overdosing of vitamins,
sterilization processes require high cost packaging, such as in metal cans. "



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