Genesis 1:29: Vitamin B12

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Vitamin B12

[NOTE: This information comes from VegFamily a very good source of reliable information for the wiser of us (i.e. veg*ans) and was orginally written by Dina Aronson, M.S. R.D.]

Vitamin B12 is produced by bacteria, fungi, and algae. Neither plants nor animals can synthesize the vitamin. Thus, it is not found in plant products naturally (there might be trace amounts in plant foods contaminated with B12-producing microorganisms, but we should not depend on contaminated food). Animal foods are reliable sources of B12 because large amounts of bacteria live inside animals, and vitamin B12 remains in flesh, milk, and eggs.

We vegans need to get B12 from supplements and/or fortified foods. The B12 added to foods and supplements are synthetically produced in a laboratory from bacteria, not animal sources. Here are some other foods that typically are B12-fortified. Make sure you read the food label! B12 is also called cobalamin.

Red Star Vegetarian Support Formula Nutritional Yeast*
Fortified breakfast cereals
Fortified soy milk
Fortified vegetarian meat analogs
Fortified energy or snack bars, such as Luna Bars
Fortified soy powders or other beverage mixes

*Nutritional yeast adds a cheesy flavor to foods; my favorite way to use it is in tofu scrambles.

By the way, the lack of vitamin B12 in plant foods has led many to question how "natural" a vegan diet is. After all, if an essential nutrient is lacking from a 100% plant-based diet, how can such a diet be good for you? This is a very good question. Remember, B12 is produced only by microorganisms. Consider the sanitary modern world: only in the last several decades have we had the luxury of treated water, power-washed produce, and machine-sanitized packaged foods. Before these conveniences, people (vegans and non-vegans) ate locally-grown fruits and vegetables and drank water from the well or public water supply, all of which were rich in vitamin B12 due to bacterial contamination. In those times, vitamin B12-producing microorganisms contaminated the entire food supply, not just animal products. The need of a modern-day vegan to supplement the diet with B12 is not because the vegan diet is inferior to a diet with animal products; it is the result of modern sanitary conditions

1 comment:

Allvira said...: Very Informative post, I liked the points that you discovered here about the children issues. The main concern for every parents would be by your words...“I hope that things are okay with your child."
Every one should follow the "It’s time to cut the technological umbilical cord and let your child live her own life. "
Allvira,
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Vegan Vitamins; November 21, 2009 at 12:40 AM

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NOTES Regarding Vegetarian/ Veganism

Genesis 1:29, "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, ... and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat"

Isaiah 11:7-9, "The cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox, ... they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord."

Some people are still going to want to eat meat.. we do agree though that vegetarianism is a healthier diet.
-David Stroud of the American Meat Institute

I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.
-Dean Ornish, MD

We should remember in our dealings with animals that they are a sacred trust to us from our heavenly Father. They are dumb and cannot speak for themselves.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe

"We have these weapons of mass destruction on every street corner - donuts, cheese burgers, french fries. ... 40% of caloric intake from animal products; 50% is processed foods = 10% veg, grain, nuts, seeds, high in phytonutrients" Anon.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman: it takes between 2,500 and 5,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef; it takes ten acres to produce one pound of beef

Jonathan Wolf: vegetarianism is a much more responsible way to manage our limited resources on Earth

Gen 9: 9,10 - "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you (10) and with every living creature that was with you--the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you--every living creature on earth.

Deut 30:19 - "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live"

Eccl 3: 19-21 - "Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. (20) All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. (21) Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?"

Mahatma Gandhi: The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Thomas Edison: "Until we stop harming all living beings, we are still savages."

James A. Froude (1818-1894): If you visit the killing floor of a slaughterhouse, it will brand your soul for life.

Howard Lyman: A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.

Leo Tolstoy: In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.

Ruth Harrison, author of Animal Machines: The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people,' you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.

Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Washington, D.C.: About 2,000 pounds of grains must be supplied to livestock in order to produce enough meat and other livestock products to support a person for a year, whereas 400 pounds of grain eaten directly will support a person for a year. Thus, a given quantity of grain eaten directly will feed 5 times as many people as it will if it is eaten indirectly by humans in the form of livestock products....

M.E. Ensminger, PH.D.: Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.

Jeremy Bentham: What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes ...[18] [Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789. Latest edition: Adamant Media Corporation, 2005]

You ask people why they have deer heads on the wall. They always say, Because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother's attractive, but I have photographs of her.

I take vitamins daily, but just the bare essentials not what you'd call supplements. I try to stick to a vegan diet heavy on fruit, vegetables, tofu, and other soy products.
-Clint Eastwood

I don't eat meat, fish, or eggs. I was never a big meat-eater, but I've got more energy now," says Shania, who hasn't eaten an animal since she married longtime vegetarian (and record producer) Mutt Lange.
-Shania Twain

I think there's something odd about eating another living anything.
-Shania Twain

Vegetarians have the best diet. They have the lowest rates of coronary disease of any group in the country....Some people scoff at vegetarians, but they have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate. They outlive other men by about six years now.
-Dr.William Castelli

Excessive animal protein is at the core of many chronic diseases.
-Dr.Campbell

The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an...evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against thier fellow human beings.
-Jeremy Rifkin

I tremble for my species when I reflect that God is just.
-Thomas Jefferson

The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.
-Thomas More

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Based on my experience in Los Angeles, my advice to the public is not to eat meat. -Gregorio Natavidad-meat inspector

I don't eat chicken anymore. I won't eat it. I won't allow it in my house. -Rodney Leonard -U.S. Poultry inspection

We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we're not contributing to their pain.
-Paul and Linda McCartney

Mark Twain: I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.

Plutarch: Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind did so, the first man touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.

Proverbs 12:10: A righteous man takes care of his beast, but the heart of the wicked is merciless.

He is a heavy eater of beef. Me thinks it doth harm to his wit.
-Shakespeare in "Twelfth Night"

A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. Therefore if he eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.
-Leo Tolstoy

Many things made me become a vegetarian, among them the higher food yield as a solution to world hunger.
-John Denver

While not a vegetarian, as we understand the term today, Jefferson was unusually moderate in his consumption of meat and was notable for the amount and variety of vegetables that he ate. His granddaughter wrote: "He lived principally on vegetables....The little meat he took seemed mostly as a seasoning for his vegetables." Jefferson's fondness for vegetables can be traced in his garden books that contain thousands of entries detailing the many varieties that he grew for his own consumption. Two of his favorites were peas and cucumbers.

You are a meathead, Meathead!
-Archie Bunker

Food & Behavior

The connection between food and behavior is so basic that it is being over looked by parents, the school system, counselors and most of the medical professionals.
Ask any hyperactive child, depressed, angry teenager, violent adult or criminal what they eat and you'll find they "live" on junk food - sweetened boxed cereals, candy, carbonated drinks, potato chips, fast foods.
Junk food abuses the mind, undernourishes the body and distorts the behavior.
SOURCE: Food & Behavior by Barbara Stitt