Guest guest Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 Rachel, It doesn't only come from animal products. It's just that animals eat it and then if humans eat it they get concentrated amounts. If we ate as much grass as ruminants did, we'd get enough, too. ;-) Labs can culture it. ~Doh ------- " Whatever you do, it is most important that you do it. " ~Ghandi > > I have a question about B12 - If it only comes from animal products > then what is the source of the B12 in fortified foods and > supplements?? > > Rachael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 I have a question. I am a pretty new (ok, very new) vegan and I have read about the B12 issue. However, I was wondering...if there are entire cultures that live a vegan lifestyle and there have been times in early history when meat was not eaten, is it possible that the RDA for B12 is unnecessarily high? Has anyone known of someone who actually had problems due to " low " B12? Still sorting out the nutritional information as a result of our move to veganism and I was just wondering. I have always been a proponent of 'eat a variety of foods, skip the empty calories and a lab-created supplement shouldn't be necessary' :-) ~M - " Doh! " <dohdriver Wednesday, February 05, 2003 12:48 AM Re: Digest Number 590 > Rachel, > It doesn't only come from animal products. It's just that animals eat it > and then if humans eat it they get concentrated amounts. If we ate as much > grass as ruminants did, we'd get enough, too. ;-) > Labs can culture it. > ~Doh > ------- > " Whatever you do, it is most important that you do it. " ~Ghandi > > > > > I have a question about B12 - If it only comes from animal products > > then what is the source of the B12 in fortified foods and > > supplements?? > > > > Rachael > > > > > For more information about vegetarianism, please visit the VRG website at http://www.vrg.org and for materials especially useful for families go to http://www.vrg.org/family. > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 6, 2003 Report Share Posted February 6, 2003 On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Marvelyn and Trey Granger wrote: > I have a question. I am a pretty new (ok, very new) vegan and I have read > about the B12 issue. However, I was wondering...if there are entire > cultures that live a vegan lifestyle and there have been times in early > history when meat was not eaten, is it possible that the RDA for B12 is > unnecessarily high? I'm not aware of any cultures that eat an entirely vegan diet. There are vegetarian cultures, but all I've heard of do eat milk and/or eggs. There are also cultures that mostly eat a vegetarian or vegan diet but occassionally eat meat when it's available or on special occassions. Our evidence about what early humans ate is very sketchy. Trying to base nutritional recommendations on what ancient humans might or might not have eaten is not a terribly reliable strategy. It's also worth mentioning that our closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees, regularly hunt and eat meat in addition to eating a wide variety of plant foods. The recommended amount of B12 is actually quite tiny, measured in micrograms. Most vitamin recommendations are measured in miligrams. The exact amount needed is open to debate, but one thing the scientific literature agrees on is that humans do need to consume some level of B12 to avoid pernicious anemia. An unsupplemented vegan diet does not provide any significant source of B12. > Has anyone known of someone who actually had problems > due to " low " B12? Yes. I've conversed with several vegans online who had problems because of a dietary B12 deficiency. I also know a woman at church who is not a vegetarian and ended up with pernicious anemia because of an autoimmune disorder that inhibited her ability to absorb the B12 she ate. I know her better than the online folks, and her symptoms were quite real. She had extreme fatigue, depression and decreased cognitive function. Fortunately her symptoms were reversible with additional B12 supplementation. BTW, I don't mean to bash vegan diets. I'm a vegan myself, and have been for nearly 15 years. However, I don't think the evidence supports the idea that humans are " naturally " vegan and don't need any supplements when following a vegan diet. B12 deficiency is real and serious, and vegans who care about their health or the public image of veganism should supplement, either with a vitamin or with fortified foods. There's nothing magical or sacred about the word " natural " . I personally follow a vegan diet not because it is the most natural diet, but because it is the most humane one. ---- Patricia Bullington-McGuire <patricia The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ... -- Stanislaw Lem, " Cyberiad " Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 10, 2003 Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 Emu oil comes from the animal and the animal has to die in order to obtain it. I worked with a woman once that raised them for that purpose. Jeanette wrote: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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