In case you haven’t seen it, there is a documentary film out called Chow Down that follows two men with heart disease and one woman with diabetes after going on a plant-based diet. I saw it and thought it was very interesting. VegParadise gives a more detailed review.
On Saturday, August 21, NaturalNews.com published an article by Cindy Jones-Shoeman, Vegan Vitamin B12 Deficiency is a Myth.
The article starts out by saying that “nothing could be further from the truth” than the idea that vegans can suffer a B12 deficiency from their diet.
The article by Jones-Shoeman appears to be a rehashing of an old article (apparently from 2004 or earlier) by Vivian Vetrano, “Rethinking & Clarifying the Vitamin B12 Issue” which appears on the Rest of Your Life Retreat website: roylretreat.com/articles/b12.html.
Although Vetrano’s article is one of the most fanciful stories I’ve ever read about vitamin B12, it is rather detailed and I will only respond to the excerpts from the Jones-Shoeman article:
“According to Dr. Vivian V. Vetrano, vitamin B12 actually comes from coenzymes, which are already present in bacteria found on the human body (in and around the mouth, for example).”
Vitamin B12 does not come from co-enzymes, it is a co-enzyme. Bacteria do produce vitamin B12, but there is no proof that bacteria living in most people’s mouths produce active vitamin B12 or produce it in amounts large enough that it could prevent B12 deficiency. This is underlined by the fact that many vegans develop full-blown vitamin B12 deficiency, and in some cases permanent neurological damage, as can be seen here: VeganHealth.org/b12/cases. In addition to those cases in the scientific journals, I have known many vegans who have suffered from B12 deficiency and cured it by supplementing with cyanocobalamin (the most stable form of vitamin B12).
About a dozen studies have correlated low vitamin B12 levels in vegans with elevated homocysteine levels. Elevated homocysteine levels have been linked to early death, primarily from cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s Disease. More details on that are at VeganHealth.org/b12/hcy.
“In fact, vitamin B12 deficiency is often, according to Dr. Vetrano, a symptom of a larger problem; that is, it’s not caused from a poor diet but rather from deficiency diseases…”
While it is true that about 2% of the population has trouble absorbing vitamin B12, the vast majority of problems that have been seen in vegans have been caused by a low B12 intake, not from absorption problems.
“Vitamin B12 deficiency due to a vegan diet is simply a lie that finally needs to be put to rest.”
Unfortunately, this could not be further from the truth. The most common, serious damage that results from vitamin B12 deficiency is when a pregnant vegan who does not supplement has a baby who also does not get any B12 supplementation. Typically, around 6 months of age, the infant’s growth and neurological development ceases and then begins to regress. In many cases, such infants have sustained permanent brain damage.
Vitamin B12 deficiency among vegans is real and is not something to be flippant about. It is so important that a number of vegan health professionals and organizations have endorsed an open letter to the vegan community, What Every Vegan Should Know about Vitamin B12 (VeganHealth.org/articles/everyvegan). This letter has been signed by The Vegan Society (UK), Vegan Outreach, and many members of the International Vegetarian Union science group.
Rhys Southan of LetThemEatMeat.com just posted an interview he did with me about veganism.
After my recent post, Grains vs. Meat, a reader brought the PaleoVeganology website to my attention. The post of August 14, A. afarensis may have eaten meat; so what?, is very interesting.
A new paper has been published on the feminizing effect of soy on men:
Messina M. Soybean isoflavone exposure does not have feminizing effects on men: a critical examination of the clinical evidence. Fertil Steril. 2010 May 1;93(7):2095-104. Epub 2010 Apr 8. Review.
You can read the abstract at the link above, and here is a little more info from the June 2010 issue of Soy & Health.
Question:
I keep hearing this doctor on the radio at 4 a.m. who says that it’s not natural for humans to eat grains (gluten, barley, wheat, oats), that the only thing it’s natural for us to eat is meat. He also tells people not to eat cruciferous vegetables. I know it should be a fairly simple and obvious answer, but I cannot think of a retort to the assertion that humans evolved to eat meat—i.e., cave men chasing down animals and killing them. Because I guess it’s true that people really didn’t start growing grains until fairly late along their evolutionary timeline, right?
Answer:
> He also tells people not to eat cruciferous vegetables.
I haven’t heard that one before.
Saying that humans evolved to do something is attributing intent on the part of the unconscious process of evolution. Humans may have evolved doing something, but that does not mean they should do it or that they will be most healthy or happy by doing it.
While we still do not know everything about nutrition, I tend to think that nutrition science has progressed far enough that there is no need to play it safe by basing our diets on what our prehistoric ancestors might have eaten. We have a pretty good idea of what diets are generally linked to long, healthy lives – much longer lives than those lived by our ancestors.
Tom Billings recently posted a new article to BeyondVeg.com, What is Humanity’s Ancestral (Natural) Diet?. It is very interesting, though it doesn’t talk much about grains.
There is ample evidence that, yes, humans have been eating meat a lot longer than we have been farming grains. That doesn’t mean that humans didn’t eat grains over most of our history, but they probably ate a lot less than we do now. This could also depend on when you consider “human history” to have begun.
It also does not mean that grains are unhealthy or that meat is healthier than grains. To find out about these things, we can look at studies on people who eat more grains versus less. That research looks fairly positive for people who eat more whole grains.
This study found that intake of whole grain cereal was associated with reduced mortality:
Liu S, Sesso HD, Manson JE, Willett WC, Buring JE. Is intake of breakfast cereals related to total and cause-specific mortality in men? Am J Clin Nutr. 2003 Mar;77(3):594-9.
Refined grain cereal did not confer any protection, but also did not increase mortality.
Here is a study showing that whole grains were linked to lower rates of type 2 diabetes:
de Munter JS, Hu FB, Spiegelman D, Franz M, van Dam RM. Whole grain, bran, and germ intake and risk of type 2 diabetes: a prospective cohort study and systematic review. PLoS Med. 2007 Aug;4(8):e261.
On the other hand, I’ve never seen a study linking meat from birds or mammals to a lower risk of mortality or type 2 diabetes.
Disease Rates of Vegetarians and Vegans summarizes the studies that have compared vegetarians’ mortality rates to non-vegetarians. No study has shown regular meat-eaters to have a lower mortality rate than vegetarians. Pesco vegetarians and lacto-ovo vegetarians had lower mortality rates than regular meat-eaters.
That is not to say that someone cannot eat large amounts of meat and no grains and still be healthy. But, in my opinion, such a person is taking more of a chance with their health than people eating more whole grains and less meat.
Finally, I would like to end by pointing out how much I appreciate my prehistoric ancestors’ suffering through their “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” lives so that one day I could comfortably eat a delicious bowl of pesto pasta made from domesticated grains and herbs, while watching The Colbert Report on my computer. We’ve come a long way since our days as hunter-gatherers!
Dr. John McDougall often points out that “people love to hear good news about their bad habits.”
Indeed, we do. And if eating cooked food is one of your bad habits, you might be interested in the most recent update of my article Raw Food Vegan Diets.
Enjoy!
An interesting paper was just published showing people who ate meat minutes before ranked cows as less worthy of moral consideration than those who ate nuts.
University of Kent news release: Conflicted meat-eaters deny that meat-animals have the capacity to suffer
Insects may have consciousness and could even be able to count, claim experts
The models suggest that counting ability could be achieved with just a few hundred nerve cells, it is claimed. And a few thousand would be sufficient to make an animal a conscious being, rather than an automated ‘living robot’….To use a computer analogy, bigger brains might in many cases be bigger hard drives, not necessarily better processors.
This article from Mail Online is from November 17, 2009, though I just found out about it today via a PETA email. It doesn’t provide any evidence that insects’ brains fit the model they have created, just the possibility that they could. And it’s not at all clear to me how they can know that it only takes a few thousand neurons for an animal to be conscious.
I have always assumed (and hoped!) insects’ brains were not large enough to be conscious of pain, and being conscious of something doesn’t mean you are also conscious of pain, or conscious of pain in similar ways to humans.
Anyway, I thought this was an interesting article worth passing on.
Dr. Michael Greger’s Latest in Clinical Nutrition Latest in Clinical Nutrition volume 4 for $20.
Or, you can get a free set for a $75 or more donation to Team Vegan!