Food Sources of Vitamin A and Recommended Amounts
 

Food sources of vitamin A are all animal sources, although much of what you read in books and magazine and newspaper articles will lead you to believe otherwise:  Butter, cream and full-fat dairy products from grass-fed cows, liver, especially duck, beef and goose liver, high vitamin cod liver oil and eggs from pastured chickens are some of the best sources.  It is very important to note that the amounts of vitamin A can vary greatly depending on what the animal was fed, as well as the season.  Weston Price, for example, found that the vitamin A content of butter was much higher in the early spring and again in the fall when the grasses were growing rapidly and were very green.  Also, research shows that vitamin A seems to be better absorbed from butter than from other foods, so if you are getting the same number of IU's, but your source is butter, you body will most likely be using a higher amount of it.

The US RDA of vitamin A is currently 5,000 IU per day, but if we look at the work of Weston Price, it appears that traditionally, people eating their native, unprocessed food took in closer to 50,000 IU's per day.  In our times, the Weston Price Foundation says you could get that 50,000 IU's of A by having cream, whole milk & butter from grass fed cows, eggs from pastured chickens (those actually outside eating bugs and greens as part of their diet), liver several times per week as well as 1 tablespoon of regular or 1 � teaspoons of high vitamin cod liver oil every day.  (Carlson's and Garden of Life brand cod liver oil is "regular" cod liver oil; Quantum and Blue Ice brands are high vitamin.)
 

High Vitamins Cod Liver Oil
 

Due to much scientific research showing the value of vitamin A, especially for growing children, many children were routinely given high vitamins cod liver oil up until sometime after the Second World War.  Even now, there are very successful programs to administer vitamin A to children in Africa in order to prevent blindness and infectious diseases, although it is in a synthetic form.  Baby books used to routinely recommend cod liver oil and liver to pregnant women and to give cod liver oil to babies once they reached the age of three months.

Warning:  much cod liver oil today either takes out the vitamin A altogether in the mistaken assumption that it is bad for you, or takes out both the naturally occurring A & the D and adds back in synthetic A & D!  If you purchase any other brand than those recommended above, you must ask if they use only the naturally occurring vitamins A and D.