Ryan McLaughlin launches ‘Fortify Scotland’s school milk’ campaign
14 year old Ryan McLaughlin of the Shine on Scotland campaign has launched a new social networking campaign to gain public support for his Idea of adding vitamin D to all school milk in Scotland. The 14 year old campaigner believes that vitamin D is so important to improving the health of scottish kids and wants to ascertain how many parents agree with him, using the social platform Facebook.
Ryan is asking scottish parents to join the group and have their say on the subject.
Figures compiled by Oxford University for a national supplementation program of vitamin D in scotland suggest 2000 cases of MS could be prevented over the next 10 years and save the UK economy £4 billion over 25 years.
The World Health Organisation have said that Scotland should start a national supplementation program.
The campaigner says ‘much work still has to be done to get the RDA of vitamin D raised significantly and I will work with the Scottish Government, SACN and the FSA to get that done, but I am positive that fortifying school milk with vitamin D offers the best solution to offering protection to all kids in Scotland’
I am proud to say that the Scottish Government have been amazing in supporting my goals, they have really listened and acted on the current evidence in support of vitamin D, as more evidence is put in place I believe that the case for fortification of school milk will increase, the Scottish government have not ruled out my proposal for fortified school milk they have said “Following advice from the FSA Scotland, the Scottish Government believes that it would not be appropriate to introduce fortified milk (or other fortified drinks) at school until such time as the evidence base is more conclusive about the impact on the population.
However this was said before new research released by the scottish government and the announcement that NHS Scotland said there was now an ‘urgent need to educate women and that all pregnant mothers and all children up to the age of 4 should be taking vitamin D everyday’ .
Now that BUPA have said that they believe vitamin D could prevent cancer and Israel announced all 3% milk is to be fortified I think we need to ask the Scottish Government to look at this again as the evidence is certainly more conclusive and it can only have a healthy impact on the population .
We are now aware that it will cost £2.7 million if every pregnant mother and child takes up the Health Start vitamin’s on offer but what would it cost to fortify the school milk, I think some political will and some help with financial costs to the dairies could see this happen sooner rather than later.
Almost all milk in the US is fortified with vitamin D, Israel has just decided to fortify all 3% milk and we have heard rumors that both France and Ireland are also considering such a move.
