bioavailable B-12

[Guest guest]

I wonder about a meatless diet and B-12, how bioavailable is the b-12 in

seaweed for instance. I remember reading that he b-12 in vitamin pills is

not very bioavailable and this is why b-12 shots are given.

Positive Dennis

Anton wrote:

--- In

, "jwwright" <jwwright@e...>

wrote:

> Hi ,

> You'll never find an article that says meat does anything. I set

out to prove a vegetarian diet was bad and read the existing article

numbering 3000 or so. I'm not sure a person who switches to a vegan

diet will get any benefits in mortality. All I know is that I felt a

lot better, my muscle soreness cleared up. I lost 55#, my BP went

down enough to dump the betablocker which was a real drag. That

allowed me to exercise again.

##### All theoretical questions aside, that's fantastic news! Of

course, manipulating many variables at once in one's diet and/or

lifestyle provides no insight or evidence about one of the variables,

i.e. meat or no meat. It sounds to me like you increased the

quality and mineral-density of your diet, which could be done whether

or not a small category of foods like meat or eggs was included or

excluded.

I was doing essentially a CR diet at 1800kcals making sure I got all

the RDA's using a spreadsheet made from the USDA database. I read all

the Sears books, walfords books, Ornish and DASH, plus the

Mediterranean ref's and Okinawan ref's. I also subscribe to

mdconsult.com to get access to medical textbooks. I think I don't

NEED meat, or egg yolks, although I'm not sure there isn't some

chemical in there that promotes something - we don't know a lot about

the human body.

#### There's certainly no individual food substance that any person

NEEDS, but any member of our species does NEED at least some animal

foods because our bodies evolved to rely on certain substances only

available from these sources. There are dozens and dozens choices of

animal foods that could work interchangeably depending on

availability, individual physiology, etc. Of course, if a person

happens to live in the current era and has access to nutritional

supplements, it is entirely possible to thrive on a vegan diet.

Fundamentally, it seems our bodies are quite flexible and can do very

well on a wide range of diets, and it's probably difficult to

distinguish between optimal and "good enough" in real-time. I

always felt great and never had any health problems eating more or

less SAD until I "got religion" about health and started eating

nutrient-dense food from quality sources, and now I still feel great

and don't see any difference. I would agree that we don't know a lot

about the human body, and that's why I tend to rely on the

accumulated evidence of history, which shows in unequivocable terms

that humans have always eaten a wide variety of animal foods,

especially organs, fat, bones, eggs, etc. If these foods have

resulted in robustly healthy thriving populations for many millenia,

then if there's any question about how to interpret the latest

contrived study on the effects of isolated substances on lab animals,

I'll place my bets with the evidence of history.

> But essential hypertension is child's play compared to cancer,

diabetes, kidney disease so I right now I'm leaning more to looking

at cancer prevents. Meat fat seems to be associated with prostate

cancer.

#### If that were so, then prostate cancer would be epidemic during

all stages of human history. I'm sure there's a lot more to the

story than the effect of just one food. "seems to be associated" is

not the kind of reasoning I would use to make major dietary decisions

that contradict massive bodies of empirical evidence like the absence

of health problem x in previous populations that heavily consumed

food y. Additionally, "meat fat" is a heterogenous set of foods,

varying in fatty acid composition, almost completely overlapping with

the fatty acid composition of plant fats, varying in non-fatty acid

components, including nutrients and toxins, depending on type of

animal, part of animal, diet of animal, environment of animal, etc.

#### My approach to diet is methodologically similar to your's,

although I probably have done far less reading and research, but

there is a major limitation to the "USDA data number-crunching"

and "research on food x" methodology, in that it deflects attention

away from issues like "quality of source", "method of preparation",

and "evidence from traditional diets". The latter issues have come

to my attention through the Weston A Price Foundation and "Nourishing

Traditions", and augment the former considerations, which came to my

attention from reading Walford 2001.

#### Thanks for your thoughtful and interesting posts, and

congratulations of your personal success.

#### Mike