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Vitamin D: the daily reference intake

EFSA sets an adequate intake of 15 micrograms a day for everyone over one year, assuming no help from the sun. The long-standing Nordic recommendation, followed in Estonia and Finland, is 10 micrograms a day for adults and for children over two. Between roughly October and March at these latitudes the sun is too low to make any, so the food and supplement route is the only route.

These are published population reference values, not a diagnosis and not a prescription. A reference intake describes what covers a healthy group; it cannot tell you your own status, and no page can. Pregnancy, chronic illness, medicines and malabsorption all change the picture — take those questions to a doctor, midwife, pharmacist or dietitian.

Vitamin D by age, sex and life stage

EFSA adequate intake assumes minimal vitamin D synthesis in the skin. That assumption describes a Baltic or Nordic winter almost exactly, which is why this is the nutrient where the published number and the national supplement advice matter most here.

The latitude problem, stated plainly

Vitamin D is made in the skin when ultraviolet B radiation reaches it. UVB is filtered out by the atmosphere when the sun is low, and at the latitudes of Riga, Tallinn and Helsinki — roughly 57 to 60 degrees north — the sun sits low enough for months that skin synthesis effectively stops from around October to March. It is not about cloud cover or how much time you spend outdoors; the radiation is simply not arriving.

That is why EFSA framed its value as an adequate intake "assuming minimal cutaneous synthesis". Most of Europe treats that as a conservative assumption. Here it is a description of half the year.

Two numbers, both real

EFSA adequate intake is 15 micrograms a day. The Nordic recommendation used in Estonia and Finland is 10 micrograms a day for adults and children over two. They differ because they were derived from different target blood concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D and different assumptions, not because one of them is wrong.

National guidance in Finland and Estonia also attaches supplement advice to specific groups — infants and small children, people who cover their skin or stay indoors, and the oldest age groups — with the exact schedule set nationally. This page does not reproduce those schedules, because they are revised and because the right place to get one is the national authority or a pharmacist.

Food alone rarely gets there

Very few foods contain meaningful vitamin D. Oily fish is far ahead of everything else: salmon, mackerel, herring, trout and sardines. After that come fortified margarine and fortified milk, where the amount is a manufacturing decision rather than a property of the food, and egg yolk and mushrooms in small amounts.

The food table below makes the arithmetic obvious. A fillet of oily fish covers the day comfortably; almost nothing else does. That is the reason vitamin D is the one nutrient where national authorities across this region routinely recommend a supplement to the general population rather than only to patients.

The label percentage is badly out of date here

Annex XIII of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 sets the labelling reference for vitamin D at 5 micrograms a day — a third of the EFSA adequate intake and half the Nordic recommendation. A product declaring "100% of your reference intake" of vitamin D is supplying 5 micrograms. This is the largest proportional mismatch between a label figure and a current reference value anywhere in the table, and it is worth knowing before you rely on a percentage.

The upper level

The tolerable upper intake level is 100 micrograms a day for adults and for children over 10, and 50 micrograms a day for children aged 1 to 10. Vitamin D is fat-soluble and genuinely accumulates: sustained megadoses raise blood calcium and can damage the kidneys. Very high-dose products bought online are a real hazard, particularly for children.

Ordinary food against the 15 microgram adult adequate intake

Top of this list: Trout, 22.8 µg in a 120 g serving (a fillet) — 152% of the 15 microgram adult adequate intake. One serving covers the whole day on its own.

† US milk is fortified with vitamin D, and reduced-fat and skimmed milk also with vitamin A. Fortification of liquid milk is not universal in Europe - read the carton.

† Margarine is fortified with vitamins A and D here as well, but the amount is set by the manufacturer, so treat this figure as indicative rather than as a property of the food.

Portion sizes are ordinary household servings chosen for this table, not official reference portions, and the shortlist is an editorial one: everyday foods eaten in this region rather than the highest per-100 g entries in the database. A raw per-100 g ranking would be topped by dried herbs, drink powders and fortified breakfast cereals, which answers a different question. The composition data is American, so where US fortification practice differs from European practice the row carries a dagger and the reason. For the full per-100 g ranking of a nutrient, the food-data section of this site publishes one.

Vitamin D for one group at a time

For the full ranking of every food in the database by vitamin d per 100 g, see foods highest in vitamin d.

Sources: EFSA Dietary Reference Values · Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex XIII · USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy (food composition) · EFSA scientific opinion on dietary reference values for vitamin D (2016) · Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, Nordic Council of Ministers · Tervise Arengu Instituut, Estonian national nutrition guidance · Ruokavirasto, Finnish national nutrition guidance · checked 2026-09-06

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