Health group says Farm Bill provides more value with vitamin D in SNAP

Everyone in this industry is a health advocate, including raw ingredient suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, brands, and of course, retailers and our consumer-based organizations.

As an industry, we are obligated to provide consumers with the information and data they need and want to ensure access to the ingredients and foods we know will improve their health status. Many of us excel at launching effective consumer education initiatives, ad campaigns and social media outreach. Fewer seek to affect change in health outcomes through legislative advocacy.

Legislative advocacy—federal or state—is a complicated process that requires inordinate patience, unbiased listening skills and tenacity. Success, typically measured by a change in law, can seem impossible, leading to frustrated constituent complaints about a “do-nothing” Congress.

There is, however, a silver lining when it comes to lobbying our issues. We aren’t advocating for new banking regulations or educating on the need for more oil wells. We are talking about individual health, and each person we speak to receives the information we provide through a personal lens. Their health experience and that of their family members are impacted by the information we share.

Legislative staff work long hours, are under stress, may be struggling to have a family, or have family members suffering from chronic diseases. Members of Congress are people too! Consumer education includes senators, representatives and their staff.

Advocacy work matters. Organic & Natural Health Association (O&E) has a long history of advocating for vitamin D, including the “Get On My Level” campaign launched during the Covid-19 pandemic to educate people of color on the importance of attaining sufficient vitamin D levels.

We also petitioned FDA, requesting the agency permit dietary supplements containing vitamin D3 to make a health claim concerning the association between vitamin D and a decreased risk of preterm births. FDA disputed our position, asserting the claim we submitted could not be based on vitamin D serum levels.

However, our board president, Naomi Whittel, was the first to issue a product label that read vitamin D3 “supports full-term birth” and “supports a healthy pregnancy” along with the following structure/function claim: “Pregnant women who have higher serum vitamin D levels have a decreased risk of preterm birth. Adding a vitamin D3 supplement to a healthy diet can help increase serum vitamin D levels. Your healthcare practitioner can measure serum vitamin D levels and determine appropriate dosage of vitamin D3 for you.”

O&N Health is continuing its vitamin D advocacy by going to Congress and requesting they make a change to the Department of Agriculture Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the food stamp program. SNAP was created to supplement the food budgets of families in need, and we are seeking to include a provision in this year’s Farm Bill legislation that allows beneficiaries to use these nutrition benefits for the purchase of vitamin D3.

Improving one’s health requires changing one’s mind, based on reliable information and data, and ensuring access to the foods and products that support your desired health outcomes. Exactly what is the data we will use to convince members of Congress and their staff—and particularly those who serve and work for the House and Senate Agriculture Committees—to make this change?

Clearly define what vitamin D is, what it does, and what constitutes a sufficient level to be effective.

Vitamin D is needed by virtually every cell in the body. It acts as a protector and regulator of all cell types, tissues and organs, and it is able to enhance the functioning of each system of the body to help keep us healthy. A deficit in vitamin D can lead to impairment or disease in each of these systems, from brittle bones to heart disease, cancer and dementia.

Research indicates that achieving a vitamin D level of 40 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) can reduce preterm birth by 60%, and also reduce the risk of cancer by 65%. The only way to know one’s vitamin D levels is to test on a regular basis, something nearly every healthcare professional is willing to do.

Provide evidenced-based data that supports the importance of vitamin D in relation to specific health conditions.

The benefits of sufficient vitamin D levels cannot be underestimated. Vitamin D deficiency is more prevalent in obese people, which creates enormous health risks. There is a growing scientific consensus of a correlation between low vitamin D levels and depression. And perhaps the most compelling research finding is the detrimental impact of low vitamin D levels in children where disruption in the immune system is now linked with asthma.

Articulate the impact of low vitamin D levels on health status.

There are several major lessons to learn from the Covid-19 epidemic. First, multiple meta-analyses indicate that higher vitamin D levels are associated with a lower incidence of Covid-19 and lower severity and morbidity rates. In addition, people of color are at far higher risk of having dangerously low vitamin D levels, and two to three times more likely to suffer from chronic diseases that continue to place individuals at risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19.

A Veterans Administration review of veterans treated with vitamin D2 and D3 from March through December 2020 found the dosage of vitamin D was inversely correlated with Covid-19 incidence and mortality. Additionally, an average daily dose of 50,000 International Units (IU) was associated with a 49% reduction in Covid-19 infections.

When extrapolated to the entire U.S. population, the authors estimate we would have had 4 million fewer cases and 116,000 deaths could have been avoided with vitamin D intervention.

“Veterans with vitamin D blood levels between 0 and 19 ng/ml exhibited the largest decrease in Covid-19 infection following supplementation,” the authors wrote. “Black veterans received greater associated Covid-19 risk reductions with supplementation than white veterans.”

Remind everyone that you can’t get enough vitamin D from food.

We are all well aware that the primary source of vitamin D is the sun. A person simply can’t eat their way to an effective vitamin D level of 40-60 ng/ml. That point has been made recently by FDA’s approval to amend food additive regulations and allow for the addition of up to 560 IU of vitamin D3 in every 3.5 ounces of cereal. I’m led to wonder whether the benefits of vitamin D are offset by the consumption of a cup of refined sugar purchased with SNAP benefits.

Increasing access to perhaps the most affordable of all supplements, vitamin D3, is one of the best public policy changes our Congress could ever make. Yet, change is truly difficult. It will require each of us to participate in our democratic process and write our legislators. Whether they are on the agriculture committees or not, we all benefit from their continuing education on how to improve health outcomes for our collective human family. You can support the “All for Vitamin D: Building Stronger Families in a SNAP” campaign and urge members of Congress to add vitamin D3 to the farm bill’s SNAP at: www.All4VitaminD.com.

And just like family around the Thanksgiving table, we all won’t agree the first time we have the conversation, or perhaps the fiftieth time we have it. But we must have the conversation because education is the real work of our industry.

Karen Howard, CEO and executive director of the Organic & Natural Health Association, has spent more than 30 years working with Congress, state legislatures and health care organizations to develop innovative health care policy and programs. She has held a variety of executive positions, including serving as professional staff for a congressional committee, and has policy expertise in the diverse areas of integrative and complementary medicine, managed care, health care technology and mental health.