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Bacon tho
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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If you’re vegan and you don’t supplement with B12 or eat food specifically fortified with B12, I don’t think you’re being optimally healthy.
You don’t have to believe me though, just read what the vegan society has to say on this.
If you’re suggesting you can get enough b12 purely through a diet without animal products, supplements or fortified food you’ve misunderstood nutritional science.
What I’m railing against is this; vegans say that omnivores eat meat only for taste pleasure and that’s a straw man argument.
No one just eats meat for taste because there is also a nutritional component. In the same way vegans have to supplement with B12 to be healthy so they recognise that things must be eaten beyond just taste pleasure.
I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.
B12 is produced by microorganisms inside the guts of cows/ruminants.
They don’t inject B12 into animals as far as I know. Maybe you could link a source for that? First I’ve ever heard of it.
Yeah I probably should have, thanks for those links.
The existence of products designed to inject B12 is different to what I interpreted the person who I replied to was saying though.
I understood them as saying that farms are injecting B12 into animals so that meat gains some kind of nutrient that isn’t naturally occurring or not occurring at an appreciable level.
I have no doubt animals have all kinds of vitamin deficiencies and receive supplements to improve the over all health of the animal and the nutritional value of meat.
But is this the reason they are injecting B12?
Obviously I’ll read more on it.
EDIT: so the very first link basically confirmed what I just said, when an animal is deficient in B12 farmers inject it to make it more healthy. They aren’t injecting B12 into animals because animals just don’t have B12…
Yeah, when you link a source for your claim that people are injecting B12 into animals I’ll reengage with you.
I tried googling and got nothing.
Do you know how easy it is to get your b12 met with just regular vegan foods? You act like fortified foods dont exist.
If you think its such a big deal, why dont you ask on here if any of the vegans have actually had a b12 deficiency, ever.
I literally talk and gave a link about B12 fortified foods in the comment you replied to.
Ah, so your point was that we take B12 supplements for the nutrition, not just for taste pleasure. I genuinely had not understood that.
I am aware of B12 being recommended to supplement. Personally, I don't worry much about it, because my oat milk is fortified, my vegan cheese is fortified, even the multi-vitamin juice in my fridge has B12 in it. And the supplements are dirt-cheap, too. But yeah, sure, people in different regions might not have it as easy in this regard.
The thing is, though, if we disregard those people, and also disregard all the meat-eaters who genuinely care about their nutrition and genuinely believe that they can only get it from meat, i.e. we let those eat their meat,
then that still leaves a huge number of people, who would significantly improve their diet, if they significantly reduced their meat intake (or cut it out and replaced it with appropriate vegetables + supplements/fortified stuff).
Nutritional experts have been screaming for decades that people should eat their veggies. Because those contain a massive range of vitamins, which the average person is not getting enough of. And if you're eating enough veggies, then you need to cut back meat intake far below the average or do a lot of sport, otherwise you're just consuming too much food.
Ultimately, why the nutrition argument is rarely taken serious, is because the average meat-eater is so far removed from eating healthy that they probably don't even know what B12 is.
I guess, if you want the sensitive version of the strawman argument which you just came up with, that apparently the hivemind of vegans says that omnivores eat meat only for taste pleasure, then as a certified Vegan™ and part of the hivemind, I am glad to tell you:
Not all omnivores eat meat only for taste pleasure. But a significant portion of those living in developed countries could easily go vegan without sacrificing nutritional quality and rather even improving it.