A vitamin, by definition, is a nutrient needed in the diet in small amounts for normal function, growth, and maintenance of body tissues. However, there is one vitamin that pushes that definition, one vitamin that won’t be viewed in black and white, one vitamin that refuses to be categorized. That rebellious nutrient is Vitamin D.

Vitamin D, unlike other vitamins, isn’t always essential. Obtaining it in your diet may or may not be necessary. Hmmm…has Vitamin D’s ambiguous nature got you a little puzzled? If so, let me walk you through the details.

You see, your skin cells are capable of forming Vitamin D in the presence of sunlight, or UV light to be more exact. Most people, in the majority of climates, can make all the Vitamin D they need by simply getting sunlight on their face, arms, and hands for about 10-15 minutes, a few days a week, between the hours of 8 AM and 4 PM. However, if you aren’t hanging out in the sun much, or you’re wearing UV blocking sunscreen constantly, then your skin can’t manufacture adequate Vitamin D and you need to get it in your diet. So while dietary Vitamin D intake isn’t essential for many people, those “if” cases have allowed this nutrient to achieve vitamin status. Vitamin D deficiency used to primarily be a problem only in populations that had a sun insufficiency: the elderly, vampires, people living in northern climates where the sun pretty much disappears for months. However, trends seem to indicate that now things may be changing…and not in a good way. But before I get to the latest Vitamin D drama, permit me to tell you why you should care about this particular nutrient.

Vitamin D, like most vitamins, is a multitasker. Its most important function is regulating blood calcium levels and preventing calcium loss but it also aids in immune function, contributes to insulin secretion, and may help ward off cancer. Vitamin D deficiency causes rickets or soft bones- amongst other things. Even if you were so stuffed with calcium that someone could use you as a piece of chalk, all that calcium wouldn’t do your bones much good without Vitamin D. Calcium can’t do its job without Vitamin D to back it up; bone maintenance is a team effort. Go team bones!

You should now understand that vitamin D is important but perhaps you are confused as to why it, a sometimes non-essential nutrient, deserves our attention when there are plenty of always-essential nutrients out there. Let me quell that confusion by sharing Vitamin D’s recent woes – the problems that have lead to increasing deficiencies.

Problem 1: You may have noticed that more and more people have become aware of the harmful nature of UV radiation. It is true UV light causes all sorts of havoc in our skin. You many know that sun exposure can lead to skin cancer but were you also aware that it suppresses your skin’s immune responses, causes a cascade of inflammation, and leads to the formation of free radicals? Oddly, although some people don’t care about the risk of skin cancer and all that other bad stuff they usually do care about being pretty. Sun exposure is one of the leading causes of premature aging. Yes, in this day of youth obsession that point seems to catch everyone’s attention. In fact it has caught so much attention that not only are many women putting SPF lotions on their faces every day but some are slathering on SPF containing body lotions day and night. They are essentially wrapping themselves in a sun proof cocoon. After all, the seconds of sun exposure here and there do add up over a lifetime and can lead to catastrophically normal skin. Gasp! Because of this rise in UV apprehension, and segments of the population avoiding unprotected sun exposure like the plaque, Vitamin D deficiency appears to be increasing.

Problem 2: When I was a kid I spent a lot of time outdoors. I loved playing outside. Most people my age felt similarly about the outdoors when they were children and now those once-kids are already dealing with skin cancer issues because of all the time they spent enjoying the sunny summers in their early years with as few clothes on as possible. My generation may have gotten a few too many sunburns back in those days, and our skin is now paying the price, but did we have Vitamin D deficiency? Absolutely not. Kids today, however, spend a lot less time being lively outside. They are too obsessed with their video games and TV shows to be regularly involved in active outdoor play. The negative effects of this surge in childhood inactivity are far reaching and include: childhood obesity, diabetes, and even heart disease. Vitamin D levels also seem to be dwindling in many kids due to their sedentary indoor lifestyles.

So now you appreciate what poor Vitamin D has been going through but what can be done about its predicament? My solution is very simple and entirely logical…heaven forbid the answer to any dilemma be logical. You see, I am a big fan of moderation and that’s exactly what this situation calls for. Many people bask in the sun, or regularly visit tanning beds, with little thought to the long-term consequences… and there will be consequences. Those consequences may come in the form of sunburns, wrinkles, a suppressed immune system, sagging skin, age spots, or skin cancer. Why tanners why? If you are burning yourself in order to be hip you should know that tan skin is on its way out! That’s right, pale even-toned skin is making a comeback! (Yes! I am going to have the trendiest skin around!) And even if tan skin continues to be popular, (It really is becoming less and less so…I would never lie to you.) is looking sun baked really worth the health of your skin? Also, if you are that concerned about appearances shouldn’t you be concerned about what your skin is going to look like in 20 or 30 years thanks to all the tanning you are doing now? Put some sunscreen on people! By the way, the sunless tanners they have these days are quite good; they don’t make you look like an oversized pumpkin. Ever considered using those instead of frying your skin? Just a thought.

And to all you people that fear the sun as if it were an evil overlord hovering above you…chill! You need some beams! Ten minutes a day isn’t going to kill you, in fact not getting any is much more likely to do so. And you aren’t going to turn into a hag if you get a few rays now and then, at least not any more so than is unfortunately unavoidable through the passing of time.

And parents, you know where the “off” switch is on your TV or kids’ gaming system right? Well, then why don’t you use it? Send you children outside to run around and play. Even if this takes a bit of work, it could save your kids from a long list of chronic health problems and sickly lives. (I know, I know, it’s not fair; you didn’t expect parenting to actually take effort.) By the way, don’t forget your kids do need sunscreen when being out in the sun for extended periods of time. You wouldn’t want their backs to be littered with precancerous cells when they’re only 30 would you? I thought not.

So to review: Lots of sun=bad. No sun or constantly SPFing your whole body=bad. Ten minutes of sunscreenless sun a few days a week=good.

And let me just say to those of you that are bound and determined to keep every inch of your skin covered from the sun and wear a thick layer of SPF 500 sunscreen day and night despite my plea for moderation and rationality- there is still a glimmer of hope for your bones. If you won’t soak in your Vitamin D you can still eat it. Good sources of Vitamin D include: fatty fish, fortified milk, and some breakfast cereals. So make sure you get plenty of those in your diet or your beautifully pale and well-kept skin could be stretched over a large osteoporotic hump. (That’s usually not considered attractive.)

I should also warn you sun avoiders that while sunlight and food sourced Vitamin D will not cause toxicity, such is not the case for Vitamin D supplements. If you seek to improve your Vitamin D status through supplementation you should be careful not to overdo it. Vitamin D is fat soluble, builds up in your fat tissue, and can be extremely toxic. A normal adult would have to take about 10 times the AI (Adequate Intake) of Vitamin D for approximately 6 months before toxicity would set in. (For an infant the amount of Vitamin D that will cause toxicity is far less.) You may be thinking that six months is oodles of time and that toxicity therefore isn’t an issue but you might change your tune when your body starts going berserk and depositing calcium in random places like your kidneys, heart, blood vessels…organs don’t tend to recover from something like that too well.

So go easy on the Vitamin D supplements, enjoy some fish, and hang out with your fiery friend the sun occasionally. A few short visits with him every week will take quite a bit of the Vitamin D drama out of your life.

It’s hard not to dwell on food safety these days. Salmonella and E. coli have made numerous appearances in strange foods such as pistachios, spinach, peanut butter, and cookies as of late. Many Americans have lost confidence in the safety of their food supply as a result of these seemingly unusual outbreaks. But before you join the ranks of suspicious consumers let me give you a few things to consider.

Concerns about food safety are certainly nothing new. In fact, thousands of years ago Roman law prohibited the sale of adulterated food and punished offenders with mine duty or exile. Even in the unrefined atmosphere of the 13th century trade guilds for butchers and bakers had authority to monitor and confiscated unwholesome goods. These guilds were not necessarily looking out for the public’s wellbeing; rather they were looking out for their own best interests. The guildsmen knew that there was a direct correlation between product quality and marketplace profits. They understood that when customers have confidence in the safety of their food supply business booms.

It would seem logical to assume that as human knowledge has increased over the centuries that food safety has inevitably improved as well. Unfortunately that is not the case. Spidey’s Uncle had it right when he said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” During the last half of the nineteenth century significant advances in chemistry made possible an abundance of new food additives and colorants – countless novel ways to adulterate and basically poison food. It took some time, and many unfortunate events, for food regulations to catch up to science. Here are some of the stranger things you may not know about food’s shadier recent past.

Since food regulations were lagging behind scientific progress near the turn of the century, citizens starting taking matters into their own hands. In 1883 a man named Dr. Harvey Wiley, the head chemist at the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry, started documenting the extensiveness of food adulteration in the United States. He formed a “poison squad” made up individuals who willingly consumed suspicious food additives that were commonly used at the time, such as formaldehyde, and documented the ill effects on their health. Yes, just like lab rats. The atrocious symptoms of these volunteers helped fuel public outrage and awareness. But, despite growing public concern, questionable preservatives and colorants continued to make their way into food without any evidence of their safety. Regulatory change was on the way however; the last straw was the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which vividly depicted the unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry. Having read this book myself I can attest to the disgusting images it conveys. (Workers accidentally falling into vats = extra lard.) The Pure Food and Drug Act soon followed in 1906: the beginnings of modern federal food regulation.

Is that where our story ends? Was everything happy ever after? Ah…no. The Pure Food and Drug Act was crude by today’s standards and certainly not all encompassing, so more tragedy naturally followed.

In 1937 a drug company decided to make sulfanilamide, a new drug used to treat strep throat, more appealing to children by mixing it with diethylene glycol, a sweet tasting liquid. The drug company performed no safety testing on their new mixture. Within weeks of this product, Elixir of Sulfanilamide, hitting the market over a hundred deaths were reported to the FDA. But these weren’t just any fatalities; most of the unfortunate victims were children who died excruciatingly. The public was incensed. As a result of this horrible affair, in 1938 the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act was passed. Not surprisingly, this new law required drugs to undergo premarketing safety testing.

But that’s the end of it, right? After 1938 all foods were safe and wholesome? Not so. Despite the potential danger of food colorants, the Color Additive Amendment to the FD&C Act was not passed into law until 1960. This amendment finally required safety testing on color additives. In 1973 a large number of botulism outbreaks from canned foods resulted in low-acid food processing regulations. In 1982, after cyanide placed in Tylenol capsules caused multiple deaths, tamper-resistant packaging regulations emerged. And lastly, in 1990 the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act was passed and those nutrition labels we all depend on came into being; yes, those lovely things that have made it possible for me to determine that if I consume more than 0.0034% of a scoop of Haagen-Dazs ice cream I will morph into something that resembles the Stay Puffed marshmallow man.

What I hope you gleamed from this brief history is that the safety of our food supply has increased enormously over the last century. You don’t have to worry about the dye from your lollypop turning you into a tumor reservoir or getting served a slice of tubercular beef – both legitimate concerns for consumers a hundred years ago.

I also hope my synopsis has led to the realization that outbreaks of food borne illness are regrettably nothing new. You don’t have to glimpse far into the past to grasp this. What we have been experiencing lately is not that out of the norm. But don’t let that discourage you. Science is always progressing and regulations are always changing as they adapt to the current concerns of society. We learn. Perhaps you have concluded, in view of recent events, that food producers in general don’t take safety concerns seriously. That is definitely not the case. Food producers aren’t dumb, with a few exceptions, and just like the guildsmen of the 13th century they know that it is to their advantage to keep the food supply safe. Outbreaks and recalls are expensive and often have long-term economic consequences for companies. So they look out for your interests because it’s in their best interest – let the warm fuzzies begin.

I have worked for several food companies and all of them have been very diligent about insuring only safe and wholesome food is released into the marketplace. So don’t let the rare instance of an imbecilic CEO knowingly distributing tainted food alter your opinion of the food supply in general. Although change may be on the horizon and reform may be needed to make our food regulatory system less cumbersome and more capable of impeding the few morons out there, you don’t need to be afraid of your food.

A recent conversation with some of my family members made me realize that the general public is quite confused about oils, fats, and fatty acids. What’s good for you? What should you be avoiding? Why? What’s with that trans and saturated stuff?

Since the subject of fats is way too broad to cover in entirety here, I will focus on a small, but still complex, portion of it: omega-3 fatty acids.

When I was a child my mom regularly required me and my siblings to take cod liver oil. I didn’t exactly enjoy this routine but, since I wasn’t given a choice, I forced this nasty, supposedly healthful, substance down the hatch. It has taken a couple decades for the masses to grasp what my mom already understood back in those days: fish oil, high in omega-3 fatty acids, is good for you and perhaps worthy of forced feeding. Although the public has finally accepted the healthfulness of omega-3s, they still don’t seem to grasp the why and how much, those details continue to baffle. With the recent interest in fish oil there appears to be a lot of conflicting information out there regarding this substance, even among the experts, so it’s no surprise that consumers remain a bit mystified about omega-3s.

Although the jury is still out regarding many of the possible benefits of omega-3s, I will divulge here what everyone does agree on.

Let’s start with the basics. Lipids are a broad class of chemical compounds. Put most simply, lipids do not readily dissolve in water. Fatty acids are the most common form of lipids; they are found extensively in our bodies and in our food. “Fat” is a term often used incorrectly to encompass a wide range of lipids, but for the simplicity of this discussion I will use it here synonymously with fatty acids.

Fat has gained an undeserved bad reputation in the recent past. We associate it erroneously with obesity and heart disease. While the consumption of some types of fat certainly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, eating other types actually lessens that risk. Besides, no matter how fats alter the risk of this or that, we should be mindful of the fact that we really do need them. That’s right- in order to be healthy we require certain fats in our diet.

So before you decide to live off carrots and fat free cookies consider this: our bodies lack the ability to produce certain types of fatty acids. These fatty acids are needed for immune response, vision, blood clotting, stomach secretions, and blood pressure regulation. Since we can’t make them, we must obtain them from our diet; hence they are called “essential” fatty acids.

There are two different essential fatty acids: omega-3 and omega-6. Chances are, if you’ve heard anything about either of those, omega-3 is the one you’ve heard about. So why, if we need both, does omega-3 get the spotlight while omega-6 is forced into the background like an ugly stepchild?

Omega-6 fatty acids are found in many plant oils so they are in a lot of the foods Americans commonly consume, such as mayonnaise and salad dressing. This means that deficiencies of this fatty acid are rare. Omega-3s, on the other hand, are found in foods not eaten as frequently by westerners. Good sources of omega-3 fatty acids include: canola oil, flaxseed oil, soybean oil, and fish of course. What, you didn’t have a salmon burger today? Or drizzle canola oil over your pancakes this morning? Shame on you! In all seriousness though, Americans tend to not get adequate amounts of omega-3 fatty acids in their diet, especially those that don’t regularly consume fish.

So why should you care? I guess you shouldn’t if you don’t value your heart, skin, mental wellbeing, or the brain development of your unborn children. If having blood the consistency of toothpaste doesn’t bother you then you needn’t worry about getting enough omega-3s. An inadequate intake of omega-3 fatty acids has detrimental effects on many systems in your body and, in pregnant women, even on the body of your baby.

Why are omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids so vital for optimal health? Our bodies use these essential fatty acids to synthesize hormone like compounds called eicosanoids. Although eicosanoids resemble hormones, unlike hormones they remain at their production site, instead of traveling via the bloodstream to a place of action. Eicosanoids are involved in regulating everything from childbirth to inflammatory responses.

So, if both essential fatty acids form eicosanoids, can’t we just eat a lot of omega-6s and call it good? No. Different starting materials result in distinct eicosanoids. Omega-6 fatty acids form different eicosanoids than omega-3s. For example: eicosanoids made from omega-6s increase blood clotting while those made from omega-3s decrease it.

Therefore, if your intake ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids is out of whack, due to you avoiding fish like it was your mother-in-law, then your eicosanoids will also be out of whack.

Many studies have been done on omega-3s and their treatment of all sorts of conditions from depression to rheumatoid arthritis, and everything in between. While most of these studies have been conflicting and less than conclusive, some things are certain:

You need omega-3s and you probably aren’t getting enough, most Americans consume less than 50% of the RDA. Omega-3s are good for your heart. They can decrease your blood pressure, improve your triglyceride status, and slow the buildup of atherosclerotic plaque- especially in those that already have heart disease.

So does that mean you should start popping omega-3 pills from a PEZ dispenser? No, unless of course you fancy your blood being about as thin as the hair on your head. Remember, as with anything diet related, balance is the key here. There can be too much of a good thing. How much isn’t too much then?

While the optimal intake level of omega-3s is still in debate, here are some basic guidelines: If you eat fish, two servings a week should be adequate. If you don’t eat fish, and would rather swallow your own vomit than ingest some salmon, you may want to consider omega-3 supplementation; fish oil capsules are the most common form. I wouldn’t recommend taking more than 1 gram of fish oil a day though, unless you have been instructed to do so by your doctor, since there isn’t a consensus yet on the most advantageous amount.

So there you have it folks, a brief overview of omega-3 fatty acids and all their fabulousness. Now go eat some delicious healthy fish! It will make your heart happy.