Vegan for Life by Jack Norris, Virginia Messina Read Free Book Online Page A

deficiency. At least one study showed that some lacto-ovo vegetarians may have vitamin B 12 status that is similar to that of vegans when neither group supplemented. 11 If consuming small amounts of animal foods doesn’t improve vitamin B 12 status, then it is unlikely that inadvertently ingesting B 12 from unwashed produce would be enough to sustain vegans through the life cycle in a pre-vitamin-supplement culture.
    Paleontology student Robert Mason, who writes the PaleoVeganology website, says this about the evolution of human diets: “This touches on the issue of how vegans should handle the caveman argument. Many of us are tempted to strain credulity and torture the evidence to ‘prove’ humans are ‘naturally’ vegan. This is a trap, and one into which carnists (especially paleo-dieters) would love us to fall; the evidence isn’t on our side. There’s no doubt that hominids ate meat.... The argument for veganism has always been primarily ethical, and ought to remain that way. It’s based on a concern for the future, not an obsession about the past.” 12
    And Tom Billings, who writes the Beyond Veg website, says, “Further, if the motivation for your diet is moral and/or spiritual, then you will want the basis of your diet to be honest as well as compassionate. In that case, ditching the false myths of naturalness presents no problems; indeed, ditching false myths means that you are ditching a burden.” 13
    We agree that it just doesn’t matter whether a vegan diet is our historical way of eating or not. The fact is, it makes sense now to choose a vegan diet. And whose diet is really natural, anyway? The assumption that there is one natural prehistoric diet, which can be approximated today and would be optimal for modern humans, is dubious at best.
    Today’s commercial plant foods and meats are different from the foods available in prehistoric times. We eat hybrids of plants and we feed foods to animals that they would not normally eat. Additionally, the U.S. food supply is routinely fortified with a host of vitamins and minerals. Even those people who strive to eat a more “natural” diet as
adults have normally benefited from fortified foods as children. It is quite unlikely that anyone is eating a natural diet in today’s world.
    Taking a daily vitamin B 12 supplement is a small thing that can make all the difference in your health as a vegan. Based on our current knowledge of vitamin B 12 requirements and sources, supplementation is not a subject for debate. Vitamin B 12 supplements or fortified foods are an essential part of a well-balanced and responsible vegan diet at all stages of the life cycle.

CHAPTER 4
    CALCIUM, VITAMIN D, AND BONE HEALTH

CALCIUM
    For most of human history, people got their calcium from plants, primarily wild, leafy greens. Dairy foods didn’t become part of the human diet until around 10,000 years ago and even then they were consumed only in some parts of the world. Calcium-rich greens were so abundant in early diets that some nutritional anthropologists speculate that people consumed as much as 3,000 milligrams per day of calcium from these foods, or about three times our current recommended intakes. 1 The cultivated greens that are available to vegans today are lower in calcium than the wild vegetables available to our ancestors, but they can still make a significant contribution to calcium intake. Vegans can also get calcium from some legumes and nuts, and from fortified foods.
    There is no question about whether vegan diets can provide enough calcium. They can. But that doesn’t mean that they do. In studies of vegans, average calcium intakes often fall well below recommendations. 2 One unanswered question has to do with calcium needs of people who eat plant-based diets. Do vegans need less calcium? You’ll see that it’s not so easy to figure this out.

Calcium and Bones
    While bones might seem solid and static, they are actually quite dynamic. The skeleton acts as