What Are The Biggest Mistakes Vegans Make? by Brenda Davis

when people first become vegan depending on why they’ve made that choice so for example if they’re doing it for animal rights or the environment they may you know just simply drop the meat and dairy and continue eating whatever they were eating so they end up with a diet that’s very high in refined carbohydrates so lots of pasta and lots of bagels and and just not again a balanced diet and what we know is when you replace meat with refined carbohydrates you experience no health benefits whatsoever one is pretty much as bad as the other so that’s something I think is really important for for people to understand

the second mistake I think people make and and of course there are several mistakes to be made but I think the other mistake is is is just simply ignoring the sort of the nutrition priorities so you know making sure you’ve got good sources of all of these nutrients of concern so when you look at omnivorous diet so there are certain nutrients you don’t really worry about you get plenty of sometimes you get too much of and with a plant-based diet it’s different nutrients and so when you remove meat you’re removing a major source of protein iron and zinc when you remove dairy you’re removing a major source of calcium and vitamin D so so you need to make sure that the plant foods you’re eating provide those nutrients

so for example with you know removing meat our richest source of protein and iron and zinc would be legumes when you remove milk well one of the richest sources of calcium would be low oxalate green vegetables beans provide some some nuts and seeds and so you need little bits from all of these foods vitamin D while some plant-based foods are fortified but if you’re eating a whole food diet and you don’t use any fortified foods where’s your vitamin D come from well if you get enough warm sunshine throughout the year you don’t have a problem but most of us live you know in in places where we don’t get out of quite warm sunshine throughout the year I sure don’t I live in Kelowna British Columbia well our winter months we get very little sunshine and even if I’m exposed to sunshine it’s not warm sunshine it’s very cold sunshine and so we don’t produce any vitamin D from probably late October through to March and and so we need to make sure we have a source of that nutrient so these are the big concerns I would say

vitamin b12 deficiency vegan diets definitely vegans are at higher risk for b12 deficiency now there’s a lot going on here so what people need to know is vitamin b12 is made by little microorganisms and and you know we have lots of those microorganisms that produce b12 in our body but most of them are in our large intestine and b12 is absorbed mostly and are small and things don’t usually go backwards so at that point once there is a large intestine so we don’t get a lot of b12 week if you have really bad oral hygiene you might have some bacteria in your mouth that produce b12 but you probably don’t want to have really bad oral hygiene because it’ll cut about ten years off your life so so we need to have a source of b12

and what you know just a couple of things to be aware of plant foods are not reliable sources because we try to get rid of pathogenic bacteria we get rid of other bacteria as well if we fermented foods in dirty vessels like a you know tempeh and wooden vats that had bacteria between the you know the the layers of wood we might get some studying Indonesia for example that show tempeh being a b12 source but in North America we actually produced tempeh in stainless steel vats that are very clean and so the amount of b12 there would be very limited and some people say well what about seaweed it has b12 and C we does have b12 however there’s a combination of of true b12 and what we call inactive non cobalamin coronoid or b12 analogues that attach to b12 receptor sites but don’t function as b12 and can actually contribute to a functional b12 deficiency so and when you dry seaweed the act of b12 gets good some of it at least gets converted into these inactive forms as well so chlorella may be a source you know AFA there’s a few of the blue-green algae may may be a source but we don’t have enough solid evidence to say people can rely on those and only those so right now most experts are saying rely on something other than seaweed as your primary b12 source

and so what is that something you’ve got two choices fortified foods and if you’re a whole foods person you might not be using fortified foods or you can be using supplements and if you’re using supplements you need a thousand micrograms at least twice a week if you’re using that’s if you’re using psionic apollomon if you’re using methyl cobalamin or adenosylcobalamin you may need it more often you know a thousand micrograms a day because it’s a little bit less stable than cyanic of almond so we need a source of b12 if we look at all of the studies I’ve done searches in the literature to see about b12 status and vegans the the folks that have the highest b12 status are generally omnivores then lacto-ovo vegetarians then vegans then raw vegans at the bottom of the the barrel because raw vegans aren’t using fortified foods and so they need to include a supplement and if they’re not they have low status so we have studies out of Germany we have studies out of Finland we have studies out of the United States showing very low levels in a lot of raw vegans and in if that happens they also have very high homocysteine levels which can increase risk of cardiovascular disease which is ridiculous it’s like shooting ourselves in the foot we’re such an advantage to where cardiovascular disease is concerned we don’t we just don’t want to ignore b12 it’s imperative that we include a source and it’s it’s not difficult

the other thing to know is that the IOM or the Institute of Medicine recommends that everyone over 50 not rely on animal products for b12 and the reason being is that in animal products b12 is bound to protein and in order to get the b12 off the protein it’s bound to you need to be producing enough stomach acid and enough enzymes to cleave that b12 off so you can absorb it into your bloodstream and it’s estimated ten to thirty percent of people over 50 don’t so so it’s if you’re relying only on animal products for your b12 at that age there’s a possibility you’re not actually getting it and you can become quite b12 deficient and one of the symptoms can be you know the beginnings of dementia so it’s it’s it’s not a nutrient to fool around with if you are a vegan or a raw vegan mom who you know who has a baby and you are b12 deficient that baby could have irreversible brain damage within a few months of of birth it this is not an optional nutrient it is absolutely necessary for blood cell formation for the functioning of our nervous system it’s a critical nutrient and so we just can’t ignore it so we need to be responsible and make sure there is a source in the diet period you