Vitamin D Supplements

Aajonus described the manufacturing process for synthetic vitamin D in considerable detail across multiple lectures and workshops, and he returned to this description repeatedly because he considered it the clearest possible demonstration of how the supplement industry operates. The process begins with oil. In the worst versions, it is not even vegetable oil but mineral oil, a petroleum product with no relationship to food whatsoever. In more common versions, it is hydrogenated vegetable oil. Aajonus was emphatic that hydrogenated vegetable oil is chemically identical in its molecular construction to plastic. He stated this plainly: "When you hydrogenate a vegetable oil, it is plastic. It's the exact same way it's constructed. That's how you make plastic. You take an oil, whether it's a mineral oil or a petroleum oil or a vegetable oil, and you hydrogenate it, and you have plastic."

This hydrogenated oil, which Aajonus consistently described as plastic oil, is then subjected to radioactive material. He named specific substances used in this irradiation process: radium, uranium, charged barium, and nuclear waste in various forms. The rationale given by manufacturers for why this process produces vitamin D is that the sun creates vitamin D in the human body by acting on fats in the skin through radiation, and that therefore taking a fat and exposing it to radiation must yield the same result. Aajonus found this reasoning not only wrong but absurd. He stated directly that the molecular structure produced by irradiating hydrogenated vegetable oil does not even resemble natural vitamin D by 40 percent, in some formulations not even faintly. The substance produced by this industrial process and the substance produced in human skin when natural fats interact with sunlight are not the same compound and do not behave the same way in the body.

He noted that some manufacturers use ultraviolet light rather than radioactive isotopes in the irradiation step, but in his view this does not improve the product, since the oil being irradiated remains plastic and the resulting compound remains an industrial artifact with no relationship to natural vitamin D.

Aajonus held the FDA specifically responsible for allowing this product to be marketed as vitamin D. His characterization of the FDA's reasoning is that the agency's personnel are drawn from the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and carry those industries' interests with them into regulatory positions. He named Monsanto and Dow as examples of the corporate pipeline feeding personnel into the FDA. Given this institutional alignment, he argued, the FDA is not a neutral evaluator of biochemical claims but an extension of the industries it is supposed to regulate.

The specific failure he described regarding vitamin D is that the FDA accepted the superficial chemical logic manufacturers offered without requiring genuine structural equivalence to natural vitamin D. He compared this to someone presenting a plastic shell of a Rolls Royce without an engine and arguing it qualifies as a Rolls Royce. The FDA, in his reading, did not have the independence or the interest to reject this argument.

He also connected the vitamin D regulatory failure to a broader pattern of label deception, drawing a parallel to what he described as "thimerosal-free mercury vaccines" that in fact still contained significant amounts of mercury. In both cases, a label claim is permitted that is technically supported by a narrow and misleading reading of the evidence while being false in every substantively meaningful sense.

Aajonus used commercially fortified milk as a primary example of manufactured vitamin D reaching consumers at scale. He described what happens to commercially processed milk in sequence: the fat is removed during processing, leaving a bluish liquid (he noted that in the 1960s this blue color was visible to consumers), and then dolomite, a calcium-bearing rock, is added to restore a white appearance. The vitamin D fortification follows the same industrial logic, adding back a manufactured simulacrum of a nutrient that the processing destroyed.

He cited animal experiments in which fortified, pasteurized, homogenized milk was compared against pasteurized, homogenized milk without fortification. Animals given the fortified version developed the same diseases as those given the unfortified version. The manufactured vitamin D added to the milk produced no protective effect whatsoever. He stated: "So the vitamin D was double that vitamin. Their version of vitamin D wasn't helpful at all."

Cereals fortified with vitamin D receive the same criticism. In Aajonus's view, any food product described as fortified with vitamin D is delivering plastic oil irradiated with radioactive material, a toxic substance that has no relationship to the vitamin D the body actually needs.

One of the recurring questions Aajonus addressed is why people report feeling better after taking vitamin D supplements and other manufactured vitamins if these products are genuinely toxic. His answer is consistent across all supplements and applies equally to vitamin D: the apparent benefit is not a health benefit but a toxic effect. When a toxic substance enters the body, the body responds by releasing hormones, particularly adrenaline, to buffer and manage the intrusion. This hormonal rush is experienced as increased energy, improved mood, or reduced symptoms. People interpret this as the supplement working, but Aajonus argued it is exactly the same mechanism that produces a caffeine rush or a nicotine rush, a stress response that temporarily suppresses symptoms without addressing any underlying condition and that has damaging long-term effects on the entire body.

He described this as a particular kind of deception because the initial response feels genuinely positive. The body's stress hormones are capable of temporarily arresting symptoms, masking detoxification processes that were causing discomfort, and generating a sense of well-being that people attribute to the supplement rather than to the adrenal response. Over time, as the toxic substance accumulates, the body develops what Aajonus described as an allergy to it, in which even small amounts trigger adverse reactions. By that point the person may not be able to identify which supplement is causing the problem because multiple substances have accumulated.

He was also explicit that this energy boost does not lead toward healing and does not provide the body with usable nutrition. Taking a vitamin D supplement, in his framework, does not give the body vitamin D in any form it can use. It gives the body a toxic substance the body must then manage and eliminate, using genuine nutrients from food to accomplish that elimination.

Aajonus situated the vitamin D problem within a broader critique of all supplement manufacturing that applies regardless of the specific nutrient involved. To extract any nutrient from a food source in concentrated form, manufacturers must first liquefy the material. There are, in his account, essentially two ways laboratories accomplish this: hexane, which is a gasoline derivative, and kerosene. He stated this without qualification: "Every time you take a supplement, that's what you're taking."

He acknowledged that some manufacturers seek to produce what they describe as all-natural supplements and go to pharmaceutical laboratories asking for natural solvents. The natural solvent those laboratories use is kerosene. Kerosene is a naturally occurring substance, so the manufacturer is told the process is natural. Aajonus asked audiences directly whether they would soak their food in kerosene for ten to thirty minutes, rinse it briefly, and then eat it, and noted that no one would voluntarily do so. Yet that is the process underlying supplement production of all kinds.

The solvent extraction damages the nutrient being extracted, leaving behind something that has been partially dissolved and structurally compromised. He used the image of a prosthetic limb as a comparison: a crude prosthesis bears some relationship to a living arm but cannot replicate its function, flexibility, or integration with the body. A supplement, even one derived from a food source, bears a similar crude relationship to the real nutrient present in that food in its raw, bioactive state.

He also noted that the manufacturing of pill or powder supplements involves additional processing steps, including drying at high heat, addition of polymers, and compression, all of which further alter the nutrient and add additional foreign substances to the final product. His research, conducted through a laboratory in the San Fernando Valley that he paid directly for testing, found that only 2 to 12 percent of any supplement is actually utilized by the body. The remaining 88 to 98 percent is not merely unused but actively toxic, requiring the body to deploy genuine nutrients to remove it.

Aajonus was not arguing that vitamin D itself is unimportant or that the body does not require it. His position was the opposite: vitamin D is essential, obtainable through real food and sunlight, and present in abundance in the foods that make up the Primal Diet when those foods are consumed raw.

He listed the primary food sources as raw meat, raw milk and butter from grass-fed animals, and eggs. He stated: "You've got more vitamin D in three ounces of meat than you will get from the sun in 20 minutes." He added that milk from grass-fed cows is full of vitamin D, that butter contains vitamin D, and that eggs are "great in vitamin D." The important qualifier throughout is that cooking destroys vitamin D. Someone eating cooked meat, pasteurized milk, or cooked eggs is not receiving the vitamin D present in those foods in their raw state. This is why, in his view, people eating predominantly cooked diets may genuinely be deficient in vitamin D, while people eating the Primal Diet's raw foods are not.

Sunlight is the other primary source. The mechanism Aajonus described is that fats naturally present on the skin are converted into vitamin D through exposure to solar radiation. He specified that cream cannot undergo this conversion and should not be applied to skin with the expectation of producing vitamin D; whole raw milk or butter are the appropriate fats to apply to the skin for this purpose. He stated that in summer, one hour of sun exposure can produce enough vitamin D for approximately two weeks. In winter, at northern latitudes, he said the sun's rays are less intense but still sufficient, and that going outdoors for an hour once every one to three days provides adequate vitamin D even in winter. He emphasized that as long as there is daylight, some vitamin D production is occurring, and that the deficiency concern around winter sunlight is largely exaggerated, particularly for people consuming raw animal foods.

Aajonus identified one supplement-adjacent product he considered genuinely beneficial as a vitamin D source for people who need concentrated supplementation: the fermented cod liver oil produced by Green Pastures. He described being involved in developing the fermentation process used by this company over a two-year period. He was careful about the distinction between fermented and processed cod liver oil. Standard commercial cod liver oil that has been refined, filtered, or flavored he did not endorse. The Green Pastures product is different because it is made by allowing fish livers to rot and ferment naturally, with the oil rising to the surface over time. The result is a product he described as "stinky," burning to the throat, highly acidic, and bitter. He stated clearly that these unpleasant qualities are signs that the product is genuine and active: "That's exactly as it should be."

He noted that the companies producing this oil found it unsellable in its natural state because of the taste and smell, and began adding flavors to make it palatable, which he viewed as a compromise of the product's integrity. He described the unaltered fermented cod liver oil as "the only good vitamin D" available in supplement form, though he consistently added the qualifier that people eating raw foods on the Primal Diet do not need this concentrated source. It is relevant primarily for people eating cooked foods who are genuinely depleted of vitamin D and cannot yet compensate through raw food consumption.

He also mentioned shark meat, particularly fermented shark, as a vitamin D source, though in that context he was discussing whether concentrated ammonia from the fermentation process would affect the vitamin D content rather than recommending it as a standard source.

He mentioned liver as well, in response to a question about whether liver is a source of vitamin D, confirming that it would contain vitamin D.

Aajonus drew a direct connection between vitamin D requirements and the degree to which a person's diet is cooked. His position is that people eating predominantly cooked foods have substantially higher vitamin D needs because cooking destroys the vitamin D present in food and because the overall toxic burden of a cooked food diet creates higher demand for all nutrients. People on the Primal Diet, eating raw meat, raw milk, raw butter, and raw eggs from grass-fed animals, are receiving vitamin D in its complete, bioactive form through their food and do not need concentrated supplementation.

He addressed the butter oil extract associated with Weston A. Price's research in this context, stating that testing among approximately 22 out of 30 people who tried it showed no additional benefits for people already eating raw foods. The concentrated fat-soluble vitamins in that product may provide benefit for people eating cooked foods, but the Primal Diet already delivers those nutrients through raw butter, and adding a concentrated extract on top of an already-sufficient raw food diet is redundant and an unnecessary expense.

He stated this generalization plainly: "You don't need all that vitamin D that they're saying you need if you're on a raw diet. You're not putting that many poisons in your body. We don't need all those supplements because we don't need those poisons."

In a separate context addressing manufactured infrared radiation rather than supplement production, Aajonus noted that isolated or manufactured radiation sources, including ceramic infrared emitters and manufactured lights, can produce a toxic variety of vitamin D in the body. This is distinct from the toxic vitamin D in supplements but involves a similar principle: the radiation is not balanced the way natural sunlight is, and the unbalanced radiation produces a vitamin D compound that is biologically aberrant. He described this toxic variety of vitamin D as seemingly beneficial for one to two years but capable of producing a type of adrenal exhaustion accompanied by hyperactivity in the nerves, a set of symptoms he also associated with overexposure to cell phone and WiFi radiation. He noted that removing this toxic vitamin D from the body once it has accumulated is difficult.

Aajonus framed vitamin D supplements as one example within a larger pattern that includes vitamin E, vitamin A, vitamin B vitamins, and mineral supplements. Across all of these categories his position is consistent: the product sold is not the nutrient it claims to be, the manufacturing process introduces toxicity, the apparent benefits are hormonal stress responses rather than genuine nutritional support, and people on a fully raw diet do not need any of these products.

He recalled his experience working at Antilles Health Foods, a large health food store in Beverly Hills in the late 1970s and early 1980s, where he spoke with chemists from every laboratory supplying the store's approximately 2,300 supplements. Of those products, he determined that only nine had any significant benefit, and those nine were prepared at temperatures below 82 degrees Fahrenheit without chemical treatment or extraction. Over the following years, six of those nine were reformulated or destroyed by pharmaceutical industry pressure. He did not identify the two remaining products by name in these passages.

His overall conclusion regarding vitamin D supplements is absolute: 99 percent of all vitamin D sold commercially is plastic oil irradiated with radioactive material, it has no relationship to true vitamin D, it is highly toxic, and no person eating raw foods needs it. For people eating cooked foods who are genuinely deficient, the only product he was willing to describe as acceptable was the original, unflavored, fermented cod liver oil from Green Pastures, and even that he framed as a concession to an imperfect dietary situation rather than an endorsement of supplementation as a practice.