A natural, healthy and compassionate diet

To be truly healthful, a diet must be best not just for individuals in isolation but must allow all six billion people to thrive and achieve a sustainable coexistence with the many other species that form the "living earth". From this standpoint the natural adaptation for most (possibly all) humans in the modern world is a vegan diet. There is nothing natural about the abomination of modern factory farming and its attempt to reduce living, feeling beings to machines. In choosing to use fortified foods or B12 supplements, vegans are taking their B12 from the same source as every other animal on the planet - micro-organisms - without causing suffering to any sentient being or causing environmental damage.

Vegans using adequate amounts of fortified foods or B12 supplements are much less likely to suffer from B12 deficiency than the typical meat eater. The Institute of Medicine, in setting the US recommended intakes for B12 makes this very clear. "Because 10 to 30 percent of older people may be unable to absorb naturally occurring vitamin B12, it is advisable for those older than 50 years to meet their RDA mainly by consuming foods fortified with vitamin B12 or a vitamin B12-containing supplement." Vegans should take this advice about 50 years younger, to the benefit of both themselves and the animals. B12 need never be a problem for well-informed vegans.

Good information supports vegan health, pass it around.

Further information:

• Dietary Reference Intakes for Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Vitamin B12, Pantothenic Acid, Biotin, and Choline, National Academy Press, 1998 ISBN 0-309-06554-2 
• Vitamin B12: Are you getting it?, by Jack Norris 
• Homocysteine in health and disease, ed. Ralph Carmel and Donald W. Jacobsen, Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-65319-3 

Endorsers include:

EVA Ethisch Vegetarisch Alternatief, Belgium, www.vegetarisme.be

Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM), www.farmusa.org

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, www.peta.com

Vegan Action, US, www.vegan.org

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