Vegetarian Supplementation

I'll just say it up front. I am not a big fan of vitamins. I think they are a waste of money, and nutrients outside of whole foods have not been shown to have any real benefits.

That being said, if you are going to eat little or no meat, there are a couple of nutrients you may need to supplement, because of our modern way of processing food.

Vitamin B12: Vitamin B12, or cobalmin, is a vitamin used in the manufacture of hemoglobin, which carries Oxygen in the blood. Animal products are the only source of B12 easily available today. Cavemen used to get B12 from the bacteria in the dirt on the food they ate, but nowadays we clean and sterilize our food because of the nastier stuff that we have put into the ground, so this is no longer a good source. For a vegetarian source of B12 these days, there are supplements available for purchase, or you can add nutritional yeast to strongly flavored foods that you cook (because it tastes kind of bad). If you don't get enough B12, you will get pernicious anemia. Your body can store this for a wicked long time. 1000 micrograms about once a week is enough.

Vitamin D: This one is true whether or not you eat meat. If you live anywhere north of southern Florida, in the winter the sun is not strong enough to give you all the vitamin D you need. Vitamin D is in most milk like products, such as soy milk, but only enough to prevent you from getting rickets. If you want to have a good dose, 2000 International Units (IU) daily is probably enough.

Iron: This one is not a must, as iron is plentiful in many green leafy vegetables, such as spinach and kale, but many vegetarians do not get quite enough, especially if they eat mostly processed foods. If you follow my Devolve diet, you don't need to worry about this, but taking a supplement once or twice daily won't hurt.

That is pretty much it. No multivitamins, please! You get most of these nutrients in abundance if you eat a whole food vegetable based diet, and are just wasting your money producing vitamin rich urine.

For more on nutrition, check out my previous posts, or www.devolvehealth.com

One of my friends and colleagues who is an obstetrician emailed me this comment:
just read your view on vitamins and I loved it. I constantly struggle with the pre-natal vitamin disscusion. for me it mostly goes like this: "While I would never tell you not to take your vitamin, it is merely a supplement and not a replacement to a healthy diet. Our bodies were designed to absorb our nutrients from food and not a pill. So eat a variety of fresh foods and you won't need to worry if you forget to take your vitamin." I'm not sure how ACOG would feel about this, but I do honestly believe it. We focus so much time on the type, brand etc of the vitamin and NO time to what really matters-- fresh, from the earth, unprocessed food!! love to read your posts.