Oatly Vitamin D3 --> D2 change soon

StevoTG

Mod note: Originally posted by StevoTG with information that Oatly Enriched is not currently vegan

I was told today that Oatly milk is not vegan! This thread says the same http://www.veganfitness.net/viewtopic.php?p=267375 .

Apparently the vitamin D3 comes from sheep.

Copied from original thread here

sweet-rasmus

I contacted Oatly again recently to remind them that they should label the Vitamin D3 in their products as D3 and not just as 'Vitamin D'. Here is the response I got:

Dear sweet-rasmus,

Thank you for your inquiry of Oatly. We have today four products available on the UK market. Two of them are suitable for vegans, Healhty Oat Organic, Healthy Oat Alternative to cream. The other two Healthy Oat Enriched and Chocolate are both enriched with vitamin D3 which is derived from sheep's wool fat (not from slaughter houses). The reason for using D3 is that clinical studies have shown that D3 is better absorbed in the body that D2 and therefore the Swedish FDA recommend to use D3 in enriched products.

For your information we are in the process of changing to D2. The plan is to have it switched the end of this year which means that products produced from 1 of January 2011 (best-before date 1 January 2012 will contain D2.

So it seems that they aim to make the product vegan in the end. Did anyone other than myself contact them about that? I presume it is from this sort of contact that they decided to change their mind. Yey!

Aoifums

Yay! I had wanted to try Oatly until I saw your post way back. I'll try it once they've veganized it.

sweet-rasmus

The original one is vegan (and tasty!) but it would be great to have the (vegan) vitamins in the enriched one

rubadub

On the subject of vitamin D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D

Mushrooms are the only vegan source of vitamin D (besides UV light or sunlight exposure)

Is this true?

I have a UVB lamp myself, I got it to treat a skin condition (psoriasis) and it worked amazingly well. In winter people will tend to get worse skin conditions, from the cold but also the lack of sun and therefore lower vitamin D. The overuse of suncream has also lead to real problems, people here are sufferring from rickets from lack of vitamin D.

sweet-rasmus

I never realised that mushrooms are a source of vitamin D. I'm glad they have a use!

The Vegan Society recommend sunshine as a natural way to get vitamin D,

"but this only works when our shadow is not much longer than we are: between October and March people in the UK must rely on stores built up in the brighter months or on vitamin D in their diet."

Also:

"Expose your face and arms to the sun for 15 minutes per day whenever you can (if your shadow is much longer than you the sun is not strong enough). If your sun exposure is limited (for example in a British winter), or if you are dark skinned, make sure you get 10 to 20 micrograms of D2 each day from fortified food or a supplement."

sweet-rasmus

Just a heads up - the latest packs of Oatly Enriched are BBE Jan 2012, so suitable for vegans now. Except they still haven't bothered to explicitly specify on the packet which type of vitamin D they contain.