Vegan doctors' denial doesn't help

Published 4.11.2016
Yes, once again I'm going to discuss (rant about) veganism and B12, because the issue is that important. There are many, many positives to eating a vegan diet, BUT there is also the fact that B12 supplementation is essential. The only ways to get B12 on a plant only diet is through fortification and supplementation. Vegan doctors who deny this or obfuscate the issue (and unfortunately such doctors exist!) do their fellow vegans and would-be vegans a disservice.

Here for instance, is cardiologist Joel Kahn saying that plants don't have as much B12, so it's good to supplement. No, no, NO— plants have ZERO B12. Vitamin B12 is produced by bacteria in the soil and in the gut (including the human gut). However, Human don't absorb the B12 they make, rather it gets eliminated. Animal guts have different structures than human guts (they can digest grass where we cannot, for instance) and they DO absorb the B12 made in their guts. They also consume soil as they eat (since they don't wash their food as we do). This does NOT mean that we can get adequate B12 by eating dirt!! (And yes, I've read accounts of foolish vegans risking their health to try eating dirt as a B12 source.)

Dr Kahn is a vegan who supplements with B12 (and several other things too, but that supplementation isn't essential). He also advises vegans to take B12 on a regular basis. That's why the interview linked above is so upsetting. Here is a vegan doctor who tends to stick tot he facts, and yet he's confusing the issue about B12.

Dr John McDougall is another vegan doctor who muddies the water on the B12 issue (pun intended). McDougall does not think that B12 supplementation is essential, and he apparently thinks you can get it from fortification and unwashed produce. I'm not sure if he himself takes a regular B12. Judging by his appearance in the frequent videos he makes, the man has not aged well at all in the last few years, and I can't help but wonder if he's developed a B12 deficiency. Such a deficiency could be easily addressed — as it is in omnivores who develop it.

Yes, that's right, I know that omnivores can develop a B12 deficiency. And when they do, the prescription is the same as for vegans— take a damn B12 supplement. But the fact that omnivores might develop a B12 deficiency doesn't change the fact the vegans who don't supplement with B12 WILL.

A vegan diet can cure. Using a vegan diet, people have reversed heart disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes. A vegan diet might not be necessary for these cures, nor might it be the only cure possible, but a vegan diet is sufficient to cure these diseases, if you can adhere to it. There is great deal of positives that can be touted about a diet that consists of eating only plants.

However, what canNOT be touted is that this is the "natural" way for humans to eat. Because eating only plants results is a serious deficiency in an essential nutrient that a healthy human body cannot make and absorb for itself. There is no other way to get vitamin B12 except through food— and only animal based foods contain it. With modern technology, we have the ability to make a healthy vegan lifestyle possible. But it is the result of modernity. Without supplementation and fortification, veganism doesn't exist. For some reason, this fact irritates the snot out of many vegans, but it needn't. The internet is a function of modernity too— so what? It improves life and people rely on it now. Veganism, not possible without modernity, heals and improves life. Why can't that be enough?

Even if your reason for being vegan is ethics or animal rights, why isn't it enough to say that our society has now advanced enough that we have the technology to make meat eating unnecessary? Does it matter to the animals if people don't eat them because technology advanced rather than vegansim representing a return to ancestral eating? This mom is genuinely confused on this point.

Vegan myths about B12

This is by no means an exhaustive list, it's just the nonsense I've come across on vegan site or in vegan videos, which I'm not going to link to because I don't see any reason to continue to propagate the myths. But since I've come across them (which means anyone deploying Google can as well) I thought I'd comment on them.

• It's made by bacteria in the soil, therefore you can eat dirty produce to get it. I've dealt with this myth before. Yes people in the past washed their produce less. No, that was NOT their source of B12. There is no traditional or ancestral society that was vegan.
• People eat vegan for years without supplementation and are fine. No, they're not. Most adult vegans spent many years as omnivores, meaning their body had a ready supply of B12. When that supply ends, the body does what it can to preserve and use the B12 it has, but in the long run a deficit results. Babies raised vegan suffer the effects and damage more quickly, because they have no B12 reserve.
• A special seaweed has B12— no, this was debunked when they found that the reason the seaweed seemed to have B12 was that there were tiny crustaceans they died on the plant. This then resulted in the myth that nori is not vegan— of course it is if it's cleaned completely, but it is not a source of B12.

The bottom line here remains the same. A vegan diet, with proper supplementation can be a healthy diet. But it is supplementation and fortification that makes a healthy vegan diet possible. Without supplementation, veganism isn't possible— at least if you want to be healthy for the long term.

My personal bottom line hasn't changed either, for the record. A healthy diet should not require supplementation. Very little animal product and no meat is required to meet the B12 needs of a healthy human body. And if supplementation is available and you don't object to it on principle, then go vegan. I may in the end join you— but not because veganism is the natural or traditional human diet.

Disclaimer
Site cookie policy



Search this site: