Milk with Vitamin D3-added or milk “fortified with Vitamin D.” These claims are prominently found on virtually every milk carton available in North America. An important additive to the ingredients list making up milk since the 1930’s, added Vitamin D has helped eliminate once common major health concerns as rickets (a bone disease seen in children) and assists with the metabolism of calcium. Few today have a problem with added, or in milk marketing lingo “fortified with”, Vitamin D milk. Would it surprise you to know that according to the National Institutes of Health, Vitamin D is a hormone? That it is, in fact, a steroid hormone?

Vitamin D is a steroid hormone, which through an historical accident was named a vitamin. Yet, some in the dairy industry unscrupulously promote and label “hormone-free” juxtaposed to “Vitamin D added” on their milk labels. Unlike the use of supplemental somatotropin (a protein-hormone with no activity when consumed by humans) which is not “added” to milk and does not change the milk; Vitamin D is a steroid hormone which is active in humans.