Fortifying milk with vitamin D: A solution to improve nutrition status in vitamin D in the general population

Vitamin D has many essential roles in the proper functioning of the body. In its latest opinion published in 2019, the National Agency for Health Safety, Food, Environment and Work (ANSES) triples the nutritional need for vitamin D for the entire population. The objective of this article is to show the interest of vitamin D fortification in milk to improve the vitamin D status of the French population. Through the analysis of the National Individual Food Consumption Study 3 (INCA3), conducted in 2014-2015 on the French territory, we showed that the dietary intake of vitamin D is significantly lower than the recommendations of ANSES (15 mu g/day) throughout life. This insufficient dietary intake results in a biological vitamin D status below the plasma deficiency threshold (30 nmol/L), as shown in the ESTEBAN study conducted in 2016. Milk is an everyday food, consumed by most of French people. Numerous studies in the literature show that fortifying milk with vitamin D can be a solution to increase dietary intake of vitamin D and thus compensate for nutritional deficiency. In conclusion, the fortification of milk with vitamin D is an effective solution to improve the biological status of vitamin D and thus compensate for a general deficiency in the French population.(c) 2023 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS on behalf of Societe francaise de nutrition.