The easiest ways to get more vitamin D in your diet

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Vitamin D is very important for your health, and I don’t just mean bone health. Humans need vitamin D for immune function, cell growth and repair, and many other things. We get vitamin D from sunlight and food, so let’s take a look at which foods have the most vitamin D.

You don’t need to get all your vitamin D from food

Before I talk about food sources, I want to address the issue of where vitamin D comes from in the first place. The primary sources are sunlight i food (and supplements), so if you have a lot of sun, you don’t have to worry about meeting your needs through food, and vice versa.

How Much Sun Do You Need to Get Enough Vitamin D? This depends on your latitude on Earth and how dark or light your skin is. For reference, please note this study which compared sun exposure in Miami and Boston. In Miami in the summer, it takes a few minutes for someone with a medium skin tone (the kind that tans easily but is still capable of burning) to get their vitamin D for the day. In Boston in the winter, bundled up, it can take that same person two hours to get the same amount of vitamin D.

Health professionals generally agree that if you’re not sure if you’re getting enough vitamin D from food and the sun, just take a supplement. This will be safer than trying to meet all your needs through sunlight, since the sun’s rays that convert vitamins are the same ones that can contribute to skin cancer.

Getting more vitamin D through food is also an option, so let’s dig in.

How much vitamin D do you need in food every day?

There isn’t much agreement on how much vitamin D we need, but the US National Institutes of Health have decided. 600 IU (international units) is sufficient for almost all people between 1 and 70 years of age. If you are over 70, you should receive 800 IU.

The daily value on nutrition labels is based on a target of 800 IU (the recommendation for adults), so most of us can get away with only 75% of the daily value, instead of ensuring- us that reach 100%.

Those international units they exist because there are different forms of vitamin D found in food, and some have a stronger effect on the body than others. Generally, 600 IU equals 15 micrograms of vitamin D, but using IU means you don’t have to keep track of what type of vitamin is present in the food.

Oh, and the 600 or 800 IU recommendations assume you’re getting minimal sun exposure—they’re for the bundled-up person in Boston, not the sunbather in Miami.

Easy ways to add vitamin D to your diet

Eat more oily fish

Fish carry tons of vitamin D in their fat, so fatty fish like trout and salmon are usually great sources of the vitamin.

If you’ll allow me a little rant: cod liver oil always tops the lists of sources of vitamin D, as if people were buying cod liver oil and taking spoonfuls of it like in the old cartoons. (Maybe people do. If that’s you, you can stop reading now.) I’ll continue with my list as if cod liver oil doesn’t exist. That said, if you really want to get your vitamin D this way, by all means buy some from amazon.

If you prefer to enjoy eating the fish you are consuming, here we explain how much vitamin D is in the different types of fish. All of these listings are from the USDA and indicate levels for a three-ounce serving of cooked fish.

• Trout (rainbow, farm): 645 IU

• Salmon (sockeye): 570 IU

• Tuna (light, canned): 229 IU (or 460 IU for a small can)

• Tilapia: 128 IU

• Fish Sticks: Unfortunately, only 1 IU

Other animal products that are good sources of vitamin D

Several land animals also produce enough vitamin D to be worth considering as a good source of vitamin D.

Milk is famous for being a good source of vitamin D (the carton often says “vitamin D milk”). There is some vitamin D naturally present in milk fat, so skim milk doesn’t usually have a lot of vitamin D, but whole milk does, and it’s often fortified to increase those levels even more.

Eat more fortified foods

A food is “enriched” with vitamins if those vitamins have been added to the food. Many people do not drink milk, so a number of similar drinks are sold with added vitamin D.

• Enriched vegetable milks: Check the label, but it often looks like whole milk. here is one Silk brand soy milk with 120 IU per cup.

• Fortified orange juice: Check the label, but here it is Simply orange with 200 IU per cup.

• Fortified cereals: Check the label, but even a sugary cereal like Crunchy cinnamon toast has 240 IU per serving.

You get the idea. Plant foods naturally don’t have much vitamin D, but many common items like these are fortified. Between food, sunlight, and the “I don’t want to think about it” approach of just taking a vitamin D supplement, it shouldn’t be too difficult to meet your needs.