[Review] What’s Up With Vitamin D? The Ultimate Vitamin D Buyer’s Guide — 24 Top Products Uncapped

Image: NPR

Trapped inside an urban, office prison — aka living hell — all day, every day? You’re likely lacking one of the body’s most uber-important micronutrients: vitamin D. Data suggests that ~ 75% of Americans are V-D deficient; and we’re not anywhere close to getting enough of it.¹²

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble nutrient that’s primarily responsible for calcium absorption and healthy bone density, which helps build iron-clad teeth and bones. It also helps maintain healthy skin and supports nerve, muscle, and immune function.³⁴

Without it, the body can’t use dietary calcium and instead siphons it directly from the skeleton. Translation — the body turns into a feeble, skeletal Jenga tower.

Chronic deficiency leads to a number of destructive skeletal conditions, including: osteomalacia, or the softening of bones, which often results in massive pain; bone deformation and rickets in children; and fragile, porous, demineralized bones — or osteoporosis — in adults.⁵ Low levels are also linked with everything from different types of GI cancer, to heart disease, diabetes, depression, and asthma.⁶⁷

And if you’re an athlete, lifter, or anyone that’s looking to sculpt a stellar physique, vitamin D is massively important for that, too. Deficiency can provoke muscle weakness and balance issues,⁸ whereas higher doses may help reduce body fat and boost muscular performance.⁹¹⁰¹¹

Clearly it’s just a little bit important. Fortunately, plowing through your vitamin D requirement is often totally free, effortless, and completely au naturel. It might just come from a source that you never expected.

What’s Up With Vitamin D & Where Does It Come From?

Image: Sister Disco

What makes vitamin D distinct, a little bit magical, and spectacularly interesting is that the body’s primary source isn’t food, or even anything that waterfalls down your esophagus. It’s the sun.

Exposure to sunlight, specifically UV-B rays, triggers the production of vitamin D3 (aka cholecalciferol) in the skin and starts the synthesis process. That D3 is later converted into bioactive, usable forms (calcidiol and calciferol) in the liver and kidney for use in the body. Vitamin D2, or ergocalciferol, is plant/fungus-based (think mushrooms) and much less common.

Depending on a number of lifestyle factors, the sun is able to fuel a whopping 80-100% of your overall requirement. Under optimal conditions, 15 minutes of sun, 3x per week, can typically max out your vitamin D storehouses; with the ability to generate up to 10,000 IU in 15 to 20 minutes (for context, we need a minimum of 600 IU per day).¹²¹³

Key word: optimal. Most people don’t get ANYWHERE near that much, as a number of lifestyle factors often compound to completely block most of the skin’s vitamin D production.¹⁴

• Sunscreen — SPF 8+ blocks 95% of UV-B radiation.
• Seasonality + Location — the further north/south you live, the less D3 you’ll produce naturally. During the winter months, sunlight in latitudes above 37ºN and below 37ºS won’t produce any D3 in the skin. That’s roughly north of Washington DC or Athens, Greece.
• Age — as you age, the skin is less able to absorb vitamin D. A 70-year-old produces ~ 4x less vitamin D in the skin than a 20-year-old.
• Skin Tone — darker skin pigments can reduce D3 production almost entirely (up to 99.9%).
• Fat Malabsorption Disorders — anyone with Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, cystic fibrosis, and other gut issues are at increased risk for vitamin D deficiency.
• Clothing — more coverage = less sun exposure.
• Obesity — higher body fat alters the body’s ability to produce vitamin D. Larger, more obese people need more V-D on a daily basis.

But lets say you’re a covered up 45-year-old, living in New York City, trapped inside for 16 hours/day — vitamin D is available in a few food sources, but it’s rather elusive. Think oysters, oily fish, dairy, and mushrooms.

Oysters, salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring, cod liver oil (yuck), and mushrooms are all naturally jacked up with vitamin D; and in the US, milk, orange juice, cereal, cheese and yogurt are fortified with up to 150 IU/serving to boost intake. For natural sources, quality reigns supreme — researchers found that wild-caught salmon packed 4-5x the vitamin D content of its farmed brethren.¹⁵¹⁶

Your gameplan: Strip out the guesswork and take a daily supplement to load up on D. At under $.03 per serving it’s dirt cheap and one of the most inexpensive health-investments you can possibly make. We’ve uncapped the top 24 products to pull out the keepers.

The Top 24 Vitamin D Supplements

Unless you live in the southern US, Africa, Australia, or by the equator — or you have an insatiable infatuation with oysters — there’s a very high chance that your vitamin D levels are chronically depressed. It’s a smart idea to regularly supplement with vitamin D3 to guarantee that you’re always getting more than enough.

Technically, adults need a minimum of 600 IU/day up until age 70 (and 800 IU/day thereafter),¹⁷ but 2000 IU/day is a much better bet for all-around health and performance, with numbers over 5000 IU proving to be safe.¹⁸ A few big things:

• Always buy a supplement with vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), not vitamin D2 — it’s the same price, more potent, more stable for long-term use, and much more widely tested in studies.
• Take it with a meal — it increases absorption by over 50%.¹⁹
• Take a supplement with 1000 or 2000 IU of vitamin D3 per serving. A ton of brands come in 5000+ IU servings, which is unnecessarily high.

We’ve scrubbed the vitamin D landscape, uncapped the top 24 products, and pulled out the best value plays. We personally like and recommend any of these three brands, or pick any of the 5-star products from our grid below. They’re all clean and accurately labeled according to Consumer Lab testing.²⁰

• Kirkland Signature Vitamin D3, 2000 IU — $.01 per 1000 IU; $.02/serving
• NOW Foods Vitamin D3, 2000 IU — $.02 per 1000 IU; $.04/serving
• Carlson Vitamin D3, 2000 IU — $.02 per 1000 IU; $.04/serving

• About
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Bryan DiSanto

Owner & Editor-in-Chief at Lean It UP

Bryan DiSanto is the Owner & Editor-in-Chief of Lean It UP, a culinary student at Le Cordon Bleu – Paris, an ACE-CPT & CSN, NYU graduate, ex-fat kid, and all-around fitness/nutrition nutjob.

He also contributes to Men's Health Magazine.

When he’s not working on his (or somebody else’s) abs, whipping up Eggocados, or running a Tough Mudder, he’s probably off yelling at a Carolina Panthers game somewhere.

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References, Notes, Links

1. ODS — Vitamin D [↩]
2. HowStuffWorks — Vitamin D [↩]
3. LEF.org [↩]
4. ODS — Vitamin D [↩]
5. High Prevalence of Vitamin D Inadequacy and Implications for Health [↩]
6. ConsumerLab — Vitamin D [↩]
7. M Holick. High Prevalence of Vitamin D Inadequacy and Implications for Health [↩]
8. Forrest KY, Stuhldreher WL. Prevalence and correlates of vitamin D deficiency in US adults. Nutr Res. 2011;31(1):48-54. [↩]
9. Andres E. Carrillo, Michael G. Flynn, Catherine Pinkston, Melissa M. Markofski, Yan Jiang, Shawn S. Donkin, Dorothy Teegarden. Impact of vitamin D supplementation during a resistance training intervention on body composition, muscle function, and glucose tolerance in overweight and obese adults. Clinical Nutrition
   Volume 32, Issue 3 , Pages 375-381, June 2013 [↩]
10. Salehpour A, Hosseinpanah F, Shidfar F, Vafa M, Razaghi M, Dehghani S, Hoshiarrad A, Gohari M. A 12-week double-blind randomized clinical trial of vitamin D₃ supplementation on body fat mass in healthy overweight and obese women. Nutr J. 2012 Sep 22;11:78. doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-11-78. [↩]
11. Close GL, Russell J, Cobley JN, Owens DJ, Wilson G, Gregson W, Fraser WD, Morton JP. Assessment of vitamin D concentration in non-supplemented professional athletes and healthy adults during the winter months in the UK: implications for skeletal muscle function. J Sports Sci. 2013;31(4):344-53. doi: 10.1080/02640414.2012.733822. Epub 2012 Oct 22. [↩]
12. Medscape — Vitamin D Review [↩]
13. Holick MF, Chen TC, Lu Z, Sauter E. Vitamin D and skin physiology: a D-lightful story. J Bone Miner Res. 2007 Dec;22 Suppl 2:V28-33. [↩]
14. M Holick. High Prevalence of Vitamin D Inadequacy and Implications for Health [↩]
15. Michael F Holick, Tai C Chen. Vitamin D deficiency: a worldwide problem with health consequences. 2008 American Society for Clinical Nutrition [↩]
16. NutritionData — Vitamin D Sources [↩]
17. ODS - Vitamin D [↩]
18. USNews — How Much Vitamin D Should You Be Taking [↩]
19. ConsumerLab — Vitamin D [↩]
20. ConsumerLab — Vitamin D [↩]