Effects of Vitamin D on Bone and Natural Selection of Skin Color: How Much Vitamin D Nutrition are We Talking About?

Abstract

Until the 1990s, the criterion for appropriate vitamin D nutrition was simply the absence of overt rickets or osteomalacia (Blumberg et al., 1963). Now, circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations are the appropriate measure of vitamin D nutritional status (Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes, 1997). It is now possible to make more quantitative comparisons of vitamin D nutrition through primate and human evolution, and to draw inferences about how differences in vitamin D nutrition may have affected susceptibility to disease.