They don’t immediately spring to mind as a baby food – but there’s a good reason why it’s worth thinking about including mushrooms in your baby’s diet!
You probably already know that your baby needs vitamin D for healthy growth and development – and you may also know that vitamin D deficiency is a relatively common problem worldwide.
The human body produces vitamin D in the skin using UVB rays from the sun – but children with darker pigmented skin and those in areas that do not receive a great deal of sunlight often do not make enough.
Further contributing to the problem is the fact that many parents – fearful of the sun’s harmful effects on their babies’ skin – protect their babies from the sun to the extent that their exposure is inadequate to produce sufficient vitamin D.
Vitamin D in Food
Unlike many other vitamins, very little vitamin D can be obtained from food, as very few foods actually contain it. For this reason – and those reasons mentioned above – many leading health organizations worldwide are now recommending routine vitamin D supplementation.
However, there’s one food that’s actually a good source of the ‘sunshine’ vitamin, and that’s mushrooms!
What’s more, studies have shown that a new technology designed to boost the vitamin D content of mushrooms is not only effective in doing so, it does it without adversely affecting the other nutrients that mushrooms contain.
Research published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry shows that when mushrooms are exposed to UVB light (the kind that gives us a sun tan), their vitamin D content is boosted dramatically compared to those that receive no light at all.
It’s also significantly higher than in those mushrooms that only receive direct sunlight.
In addition, the mushrooms exposed to direct sunlight lost some of their other valuable nutrients in the process… whereas those exposed to the UVB light did not.
This means that the new technology designed to make mushrooms an even better source of vitamin D isn’t at all detrimental to the other nutrients they contain!
Not all mushrooms in stores will have received the UVB treatment…
But you can actually increase the vitamin D content of mushrooms yourself, simply by leaving them outside in the sunshine for a few hours!
Please note, though, that putting them on the window sill will not have the same effect. This is because the window glass will stop the all-important rays from reaching the mushrooms.
Click here to learn more about introducing mushrooms to your baby
and
Click here to learn more about your baby and vitamin D
Sources:
Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet:
Vitamin D
Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry