Vitamin sunshine

Gordon Brownlie enjoys some evening ‘sunshine’ on Buchanan Street, courtesy of Food Standards Scotland’s (FSS) ‘Vitamin D Orb’.

The mock giant vitamin tablet was on the Glasgow shopping thoroughfare to promote FSS’s ongoing campaign to encourage people of all ages to take a daily 10-microgram vitamin D supplement, to boost their levels during the winter months.

Vitamin D has a number of important functions in the body and is needed to support bone and muscle health.

The body creates vitamin D from direct sunlight on the skin when outdoors. But in Scotland, we only get enough of the right kind of sunlight for our bodies to make vitamin D between April and September, meaning for roughly half the year (between October and March) it is not possible for our bodies to make it from sunlight.