A new international study involving the University of Otago, Christchurch, has found that vitamin C deficiency is significantly linked to weight gain, a growing public health concern given the global obesity epidemic.
The findings, published in the British journal Critical Reviews in Food, Science and Nutrition, found that heavier people require significantly more than the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of essential vitamins to stay healthy, and that much of the world’s population does not currently meet the recommended intake of vitamin C.
Professor Anitra Carr
“Our data indicate that current internationally recommended daily intakes of vitamin C are significantly underestimated,” said lead researcher Professor Anitra Carr, director of the Nutritional Medicine Research Group at the Christchurch campus.
“All current international recommended daily intakes of vitamin C for men, women and children are extrapolated from a healthy, young, 70kg male, allowing for a 10 percent deviation, and are guidelines that should cover 97.5 percent of the population,” Professor Carr says.
“Clearly, with weight increasing worldwide, a significant proportion of the world’s population is no longer meeting these recommended intakes.”
New Zealanders are currently advised to consume 45 milligrams of vitamin C per day, in line with the World Health Organisation’s recommendation, which Professor Carr says is currently one of the lowest recommended intakes in the world.
She said these new findings estimate that for every 10 kg of body weight, a person weighing 70 kg needs an additional 17 to 22 mg of vitamin C per day to achieve adequate vitamin C levels.
“We feel that this new evidence highlights the need for revision of the recommended daily intakes of vitamin C nationally and internationally to help guide future public health recommendations,” she says.
The study, co-authored by researchers from the Universities of Copenhagen and Aberdeen, analyzed two large international datasets: the 2017-2018 US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which included 2,828 adults, and the 1993-1997 Norfolk European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC) study, which included 20,692 participants.
Results showed that only about two-thirds of both cohorts achieved “adequate” vitamin C plasma concentrations by consuming the recommended daily allowance or more, while only one-third to one-half of the cohorts achieved an “adequate” status by consuming the RDA plus or minus 10 percent.
According to international studies, obesity may affect the relationship between the dose and concentration of vitamin C in the body, as low-grade inflammation can increase oxidative stress and increase the metabolism of vitamin C in the body. Obesity is also known to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which are associated with reduced vitamin C status.
The study authors suggest that additional vitamin C intake can be easily achieved through diet or supplements.
“An average-sized apple contains 10 milligrams of vitamin C, so if you weigh 70-80kg, eating one or two extra apples to get an extra 10-20 milligrams of vitamin C a day would be enough to achieve your body’s optimum vitamin C needs. If you weigh more than this, an orange, which contains 70 milligrams of vitamin C, or kiwifruit, which has 100 milligrams, may be the simplest solution,” Prof Carr says.
“My advice to anyone who chooses to get vitamin C from a multivitamin is to check the exact amount of vitamin C per tablet. Some multivitamins only contain very low doses of vitamin C.”
She says there is growing evidence worldwide that vitamin C is essential for disease prevention.
“Although vitamin C was originally thought to be useful only in preventing scurvy, there is now compelling evidence that consuming sufficient amounts of vitamin C may play an important role in reducing the risk of more common diseases, such as heart disease and cancer.”
“Other studies have shown that symptoms associated with vitamin C deficiency, such as increased risk of infection, poor wound healing and risk of depression and fatigue, increase with weight gain,” Professor Carr says.
Publication details
Increasing proportion of the population not covered by the current RDA for vitamin C – a survey of EPIC-Norfolk and NHANES 2017/2018 cohorts
Food Science and Nutrition (UK)
Anitra C. Carr, Pyo Cho Min, Samantha C. Vijwardhan, Alexandra M. Johnston, Jennifer Crook & Jens Luxfeldt
*Professor Anitra Carr is currently ranked number one Vitamin C researcher in the world and the University of Otago is ranked number one academic institution internationally for Vitamin C related research.
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