Vitamin D: Can the requirement be met through diet?
You can delay a deficiency in the winter months with the help of vitamin D-rich foods. However, there are only a few foods that have significant amounts of vitamin D, which is why undersupply is not uncommon. If you are unsure, have a blood test at your next doctor’s appointment to determine whether your vitamin D level is sufficiently high. By the way, vitamin D in children is also an important topic that you should not underestimate! There are now also practical tests that you can use to determine your vitamin D level at home, e.g Cerascreen or Lycon. For all those who do not want to cover their vitamin D requirements with tablets but with nutrition, we provide them here 7 foods with the highest vitamin D content before.
Also exciting: You really need that much vitamin D >>
The 7 foods with the highest vitamin D content
1. Fatty Fish
Fatty types of fish contain many important nutrients, such as omega-3 fatty acids, iodine and vitamin D herring and Salmon with approximately. 15 micrograms Vitamin D per 100 grams of fish far ahead. Smoked eel tops the whole thing with 90 micrograms of vitamin D per 100 grams of eel. Mackerel still contain 4 micrograms per 100 grams. To put the whole thing in perspective: The daily requirement of vitamin D is 20 micrograms. Herring and salmon are therefore good common sources to counteract winter shortages.
2. Chicken egg
Some animal products are good sources of vitamin D. This also includes chicken eggs. Especially that egg yolk is nutrient-rich and contains larger amounts of vitamin D. 100 grams of egg come from there 2.9 micrograms of vitamin D.
Reading Tip: Of course, too much vitamin D can also have a counterproductive effect on our health. Read here how to recognize a vitamin D overdose.
3. Mushrooms
Mushrooms are a food that is often underestimated. When prepared correctly, they not only provide us with the rare umami taste, but also with useful nutrients. Since they absorb vitamin D when exposed to the sun, contain, for example Mushrooms 1.9 micrograms of vitamin D per 100 grams. chanterelles even come to approx. 2.1 micrograms. Useful tip: the mushrooms absorb even more vitamin D if you put them in the sun for a short time in summer. A short sunbath of about 10 to 15 minutes immediately before preparation increases the vitamin D content of the mushrooms noticeably.
4. Fortified Margarine
While margarine does not naturally contain vitamin D, it does one of the few foods that can be fortified with vitamin D in Germany. Depending on the enrichment, margarines therefore contain between 2.5 and 7.5 micrograms per 100 grams of food. When buying, look for the label “contains vitamin D” and check the vitamin D content in the nutritional information on the back of the packaging. Unfortunately, margarine is not a healthy source of vitamin D, since the quantities that would be necessary to cover the daily requirement of vitamin D are far too high to be covered by the high-fat product margarine.
5. Cheese
When it comes to cheese, it depends on the type: hard cheese such as Gouda contains on average 1.3 micrograms per 100 grams of food. Unfortunately, soft cheese or cream cheese does not contain any appreciable amounts of the sun vitamin. Similar to margarine, cheese is very high in fat and calories, which is why it is only of limited use as a source of vitamin D.
6. Cod liver oil
with whole 300 micrograms per 100 grams, cod liver oil is the absolute leader among vitamin D sources. The oil, which is mainly obtained from the liver of cod and haddock, was therefore also used in Germany up until the 1960s to prevent vitamin D deficiency and rickets (softening of the bones). However, since the taste is very penetrating and there is a risk of overdose, cod liver oil is no longer used today.
Tip: Only if your doctor diagnoses a deficiency or undersupply should you consider a supplement, because if used incorrectly there is a risk of overdose consists. In addition, a good vitamin D preparation should always contain vitamin K2 as well, since the two vitamins have a synergistic effect, for example in the formation of bone substance. Appropriate preparations can be found here, for example capsule shape or in teardrop shape.
7. Dark Chocolate
Chocoholics: watch out! Because you can actually cover part of your daily vitamin D requirement with chocolate. This does not apply to white chocolate or milk chocolate with a low cocoa content. But at least 100 grams of dark chocolate gives us between 1.9 and 5.48 micrograms of vitamin D – as researchers at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg discovered in 2017. Since the sun vitamin is contained in cocoa, the following applies: The higher the cocoa content, the better!
Myth avocado: unfortunately not a source of vitamin D
On the Internet you can always find the statement that avocados contain large amounts of vitamin D. And the vitamin D content of 3 to 6 micrograms per 100 grams of avocado is also given in the databases of many food tracking apps. Unfortunately, this information is based on an incorrect entry in a large German food database, which has now been corrected. The Federal Food Code (BLS) now puts the vitamin D content of avocados at 0 grams US Department of Agriculture (USDA) database Avocados are listed as having 0 grams of vitamin D.