Race, Skin Color, Health, and Vitamin D

Updated Again! See below (new update in red)

After reading this post by Dennis Mangan on vitamin D and lung function, I have been thinking lately about the possibility that part of the reason why blacks in the U.S. have such worse health than whites is literally because of the color of their skin. That is, because their darker skin does not use sunlight to produce vitamin D as efficiently as it does in white people. (That is why light-skinned people tend to predominate in less sunny climes. There are a few exceptions; notably the Eskimos, but they eat a lot of fish, which is about the only significant dietary source of vitamin D).

In other words, how much would it improve the health of U.S. blacks were we to encourage them to take vitamin D supplements, or, for those who don't like pills, to take cod liver oil.

Maybe that would even reduce the IQ gap by a point or two, hmmm?

Update: Dennis Mangan has a post up about blacks and Vitamin D. I am the reader who wrote to him, by the way. It's a good post; go read it.

Apparently, a website called Little Geneva has noticed this posting and has linked to me (search the page for "more proof") because of it. While I thank them for their kindness in linking, I can't say that I agree with them on their interpretation. While I think that one could argue that God did indeed intend for racial separation for a time (as part of a "divide and conquer" strategy of mankind - I'll explain later), I think that it is not unreasonable to think that such a time has passed, and that He allowed us to make the technological advances we have made in order that there can be more interaction between the races. That is, back in the 1600s (or even into the 20th century) it would be a bad idea for a black person to live in any northern area that did not have a good supply of cod, salmon, or sardines. But now that we have vitamin D supplements, and that cod liver oil and vitamin D rich fish are cheap, plentiful, and available far from where they are caught, skin color no longer need be a biological disadvantage in unsunny, unfishy climates.

That is all.