Gollum and other Evildoers in 'The Hobbit' have Lower Levels of Vitamin D, Researchers Say

Vitamin D helps the good guys defeat the bad guys- at least in 'The Hobbit'. According to a latest study on characters in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic book, good diet and exercise are important in winning a battle.

Dr Nicholas Hopkinson of Imperial College London and his son Joseph have proposed the idea that the sunshine vitamin plays an important role in the 'good over evil' war.  Their study is published in the holiday edition of Australian Medical Journal.

Vitamin D is known to keep the bones strong. An earlier research said that a high intake of vitamin D reduced fracture risk in older adults. Another research revealed that taking Vitamin D and calcium prolonged life and that a deficiency of vitamin D in diet might lead to depression.

For the study, researchers looked at the fictional characters' diet and lifestyle. They believe that  Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist in The Hobbit, has high levels of vitamin D; he lives in a cave with  windows and is able to offer a varied meal to the dwarves. In contrast, Gollum and his Evil Co. live in darkness and have poor levels of the vitamin.

Of course, one can't chart-out a fictional character's dietary requirements and the researchers admit to the limitations.

"We have not discriminated between creatures that can be considered, broadly speaking, to be mammalian and those that are not and whose physiology is more obscure, the researchers said in a news release. "Unfortunately, the principal purpose of the author of The Hobbit was not to provide a systematic dietary history, so reporting bias is a possibility. In particular, there is an emphasis in the text on meat items similar to Homer's Odyssey, where feasting is a recurrent motif but where few references to salad are made."

Looks like scientists have gotten into researching the lifestyles of popular fictional characters. Recently, super-spy 'James Bond' was found to be suffering from alcohol-induced tremors due to his love for vodka martinis.

The Middle-Earth also made an appearance in another study that said the climate of Shire would most probably be like the climate in certain English counties such as Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Dunedin.