From Yahoo News:

Changing lifestyles among children is leading to a Vitamin D deficiency and a rise in cases of rickets, medical experts have said.


They said youngsters were spending more time indoors on their computers rather than previous generations who spent time playing outside with their friends.

Two medical experts have called for Vitamin D to be added to milk and other food products.

They said modern diets often lack Vitamin D and this could be a big reason - along with changing lifestyles - for the increasing health problems, in particular rickets in children.

Writing a clinical review in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal, Professor Simon Pearce and Dr Tim Cheetham, of Newcastle University, call for a change in public health policy.

Prof Pearce, a professor of endocrinology, said: "Kids tend to stay indoors more these days and play on their computers instead of enjoying the fresh air.

"This means their Vitamin D levels are worse than in previous years.

"A change in public health policy is required. Health professionals have been slow to deal with this problem, even though we have known about it for a while.

"Some measures have been taken but the number of patients still presenting with symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency shows we have a long way to go."

Rickets, where children develop painful and deformed bow-legs and do not grow properly, is a condition linked with poverty, starvation, Victorian times or those in the developing world - not with 21st century Britain.


NLanders, what do you think?