Vitamin A -is it poisonous?

People always ask me about the safety of vitamin A. I wish I could put to rest the myth of ‘the poisonous Vitamin A’, once and for all. The “for all” bit might be a little ambitious but maybe it can be done for you. Here is the story.

Early last century, three explorers took off for Antarctica. They had provisions, sleighs and of course sleigh dogs to pull them. As always happens in these situations, at some stage, they lost one explorer, his sleigh and all their provisions. But they still had their dogs.

I can cut the story short because you know what was bound to happen: they ate the dogs. The problem is, they did not just eat the dogs, they made sure they ate the livers, because they thought that liver is better for you. One of the explorers was a vegetarian, he ate mostly the livers because he could not bring himself to eat flesh; he found liver easier to cope with (very bizarre). Being Europeans and having no knowledge of Arctic zoology, scientific or empirical, they did not know that for the Inuit people eating the liver of carnivorous animals was absolutely taboo.

Why is it taboo? Well, simply because the liver of arctic carnivorous animals being the last of the food chain is incredibly rich in… Vitamin A! (Nowadays it is also rich in DDT, but that’s another story). So when Inuit hunters kill a polar bear, they throw the liver to their dogs! Dogs livers can cope with almost anything. Our explorers did not know that of course and as a consequence they suffered from severe Vitamin A poisoning. The vegetarian? Well, he died.

Because of this story Vitamin A has been maligned ever since. In spite of all the research that has since proven that one can take large amounts of it without dying or going mad, the myth survives. I could carry on and illustrate the point further with a very good joke about a Greek herbalist, stone masonry, boat building and a goat, but I won't because it is a little X-rated.

The best source of Vitamin A is Cod Liver Oil. Don’t worry you don’t have to drink it. Fortunately, Vitamin A oil capsules are easy and very cheap to buy. This is really the only source of Vitamin A that is worth bothering about. Synthetic vitamin A on the other hand is useless and causes problems.

So there you have it. The habit of having cod liver oil daily is a good habit but don’t drink the whole bottle and don’t eat your dog’s liver.