Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what comparative assessment his Department has made of guidance on vitamin D consumption issued in the (a) UK, (b) US and (c) EU.

In 2016, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) published a review of the evidence on vitamin D and a wide range of health outcomes. This included consideration of the approach taken by the Institute of Medicine in the United States in setting dietary reference intakes for vitamin D. In 2016, the SACN and the European Food Safety Authority published a joint explanatory note outlining their dietary reference values (DRVs) for vitamin D.

The SACN noted that for assessments carried out in the United Kingdom, US and the European Union, serum concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) continues to be the best indicator of exposure to vitamin D from skin synthesis and dietary intake, and is used to derive DRVs for vitamin D. However, the evidence considered for setting a target concentration of 25(OH)D, as the basis for setting DRVs, is not the same.