Let’s Talk About Vitamin D

by Liz Colville

Vitamin D! I think about it a lot. When I returned from a visit to New York last week, I experienced a strange phenomenon when I got on the plane at JFK: I looked out the window and promptly shriveled away from the light because it hurt my eyes! Why? Because I had not seen the sun the entire week I’d been in New York! True story. Therefore no Vitamin D, therefore a justifiable reason for hating everyone and everything. Anyway, David McCandless’s lovely blog Information Is Beautiful recently featured a serious and pretty chart about Vitamin D and our lack thereof. The unfortunate thing about this vitamin is that UV B “burns your skin” (‘B’ is for ‘burn’), “but also creates Vitamin D.” We need that shit. But because of Daylight Savings and clouds and things, many of us are “insufficient” or “severely deficient” in it — more of us than we probably realize. Of course, there are some things we can eat to get Vitamin D, and fortunately, they look all the more appetizing when illustrated by this blog.