Recently, a friend of mine got a vitamin D deficiency related tumor. Needless to say, he is of Turkish descent, living in Germany. Since the problem got resolved, I spared him the lecture about how he can't survive in this hostile environment without supplements because the sun is literally racist. I tell the vitamin D run down unprompted to all my friends "of color" to save them severe medical problems. However, I avoid it if I can, since they get all defensive and offended.

This made me wonder, though, how much variability in melanin is there among indigenous European peoples?

We all know that Anglos look like pink pigs, while Nords look like ghosts, so there seems to be a difference, everyone is not just "white".

However, for the rest of Europe, it seems that there isn't much variation. For example, Hungary and Austria look as white as say Italy and Bulgaria. Wouldn't less or more sun require slightly different melanin levels?

inb4 Italians aren't white. inb4 Bulgarians aren't white. inb4 tanned picture of greek man, tan =! natural pigmentation.

I tried looking for data, but can only find studies comparing Africans to Europeans. I am not sure why we need studies to conclude that Africans are darker than Europeans but there you go.

Also whats your vitamin D schedule? I take 2000iu everyday, but don't bother getting tested.