Milling & Baking News - August 11, 2009 - 9

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Major vitamin D opportunity seen
emerging for grain-based foods
KANSAS CITY - Potentially extraordinary opportunities to enhance public health through fortification of flourbased foods with vitamin D appeared
to take clearer form in the wake of significant developments last week.
Scientists have expressed increasing
concerns in recent years over whether
the public's intake of vitamin D was sufficient. The worries attracted national attention with the publication of research
by the journal Pediatrics Aug. 3 indicating 61% of young Americans, 50.8 million, were vitamin D insufficient and
9%, or 7.6 million, were vitamin D deficient. The levels were far higher than
many scientists said they had believed.
A second study, of adolescents,
similarly found blood levels of most
subjects were vitamin D insufficient.
While blood levels were particularly
depressed for African-Americans and
Hispanics, whites also were too low.
Workshop examines hurdles
Separately, last week, the Institute of
Medicine inched closer toward raising
the upper tolerances for vitamin D, addressing a significant potential hurdle
for widespread vitamin D fortification.
The I.O.M. Committee to Review
Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin
D and Calcium conducted an information-gathering workshop reviewing
data for determining reference values
for vitamin D while also exploring
health problems associated with insufficient vitamin D intake.
High blood pressure, certain forms
of cancer, auto-immune disorders,
multiple sclerosis, bad outcomes of
pregnancy, falls in the elderly and
periodontal disease are among the
chronic conditions increasingly associated with vitamin D deficiency.
While grains are not a major natural source of vitamin D, the potential
role grain-based foods may have in
combating insufficiencies has been
discussed for several years.
"Bread is a cost effective way to
deliver vitamin D and calcium," Julie Miller Jones said in a 2006 panel at
the Institute of Food Technologists. Dr.
Jones, a nutrition professor at the College of St. Catherine, and other panelists agreed that flour-based foods hold
great potential for helping resolve vitamin D deficiencies.
Numerous factors have played into
the emergence of vitamin D problems,
Dr. Jones told Milling & Baking News
bakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com

last week. She noted that sunshine and
dairy products historically have been
principal sources for vitamin D.
"I think that between the I.O.M. work
and these latest reports, the evidence
has been pointing to the fact that the vitamin D levels in the population overall
are too low," she said. "Kids who used
to be outside playing, they are now inside sitting. That change has all kinds
of ramifications and vitamin D is one

Cincinnati-based Klosterman Baking Co.
later this month will launch a new calcium
and vitamin D white bread. The bread was
developed from Eagle VitaD bakers' yeast.

of them. The one piece of health advice
people listen to is applying sunscreen.
That dramatically cuts back on vitamin
D. Plus, we're drinking less milk."
Citing the work of Professor Robert P.
Heaney of Creighton University in Omaha, Dr. Jones said vitamin D is "involved
in many, many (bodily) systems."
Asked why more grain-based foods
are not fortified with vitamin D at present, Dr. Jones replied she was uncertain.
"I don't know," she said. "I predicted they would increase the amount we
need and the upper tolerable levels.
The argument is, how do we increase
it and safely increase it so that we
don't put people at risk. I think there
are pretty good data that amounts
twice the current recommended levels
are safe and could be advantageous.
"The upper limit is a key, key question. People are skittish about it (because of potential toxicity)."
Dr. Heaney, who is the John A.
Creighton University professor of
Medicine in Creighton's Department
of Medicine, said worries about toxicity are diminishing.
"Bakers have the freedom to fortify at a reasonable level," he said.
"It's incredibly safe, easy to deal with
and survives the baking process.
I don't know any problem at all."
Finding acceptable levels
Current recommended levels for
vitamin D intake are 200 to 600 international units, and the current upper level
of vitamin D intake was set at 2,000 I.U.

Nutrition and Health

for all age groups. More recent research,
though, indicates that intake of vitamin
D at 4,000 I.U. per day for up to five
months is safe and will not result in hypercalciuria, which is a condition of elevated calcium in the urine and may lead
to impairment of renal function, nephrocalcinosis, and renal insufficiency.
As recently as the mid-1990s, little
was known about the importance of
vitamin D in the diet beyond its association with calcium absorption, Dr.
Heaney, who presented at last week's
I.O.M. workshop, said.
"No one had ever measured how
much vitamin D was necessary to produce how much absorption," he said.
"It's a dose response relationship. It's
as if we said it's necessary for calcium
absorption, but don't know how much
or don't seem to care.
"In 1996-97, there was almost nothing
known about vitamin D. I began studying vitamin D responses. More than 90%
of what we know today about vitamin
D has been learned since the mid-1990s.
It isn't even in the textbooks."
Effects are widespread
Dr. Heaney said it is difficult to overstate the importance of vitamin D in preventing many different chronic diseases.
"The effects are so widespread," he
said. "Vitamin D unlocks the DNA library and accesses information needed
to deal with whatever stresses are encountered, extending to every organ,
every tissue. Without adequate vitamin
D, you can expect dysfunction. Vitamin
D isn't snake oil that cures everything.
It reduces the risk of many things."
Dr. Heaney expressed support for
mandatory fortification of enriched
grains with vitamin D, describing fortification as "the logical way to go." Still,
he expressed skepticism about whether
that could happen any time soon.
"It took 24 years to mandate folic acid
fortification," Dr. Heaney said. "Public
health officials are worried about toxicity. They realize the evidence is strong
but ask, what if we do it at a population
level? A lot of fear of harm. You know
how it is with bureaucrats. There is no
penalty for doing nothing."
James T. Kopp Sr., vice-president of
nutritional food ingredients at Lallemand, Inc., Montreal, also spoke of the
need to increase intake of vitamin D at
the I.O.M. workshop.
While echoing many of the same
sentiments as Dr. Jones and Dr. Heaney about vitamin D's role in recent
years, Mr. Kopp also pointed out the
need to encourage consumption of
foods, not supplements, as the source
Milling & Baking News August 11, 2009 / 9

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Milling & Baking News - August 11, 2009

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