Thank you for the information, Prana! Extremely helpful.

I just jokingly asked about mescal because that website with the detailed explanations of SAM type 4 mentioned a natural, abundant source as mescal... fermented alcoholic agave beverage.

It's not vegan, though. I think you're supposed to eat the worm they add to it.

Funny! I thought you must be talking about some sort of health supplement I'd never heard of, didn't think you were referring to actual mescal! LOL.

I assumed you were sincere, phantom, and thought, "whoa, I'm stayin' out of this one!"

I bet the worm contains extra B12. :O

The only way we can be certain that 40% of population are B12 deficient is if we test the whole population. This won't happen of course, due to the costs. What remains is to speculate that perhaps 40% of population are B12 deficient.

The cause of the confusion is that the words such as
* may be
* perhaps
* possibly
etc, which appear in the papers, are omitted.


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It just shows how easily studies are mis-interpreted, the article merely suggested that if the B12 findings of the study which was limited to 3000 people from one state were anything to go by then the rest of the US may be flirting with marginal b12 status.

How they got from that, that 40% of the US are clinically B12 deficient is beyond me lol.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]

There are no studies that are definative, in other words, they all only suggestive at best. I believe that someone came to that 40% figure by taking a small representative sample of the population, then generalising to the whole. I bet the original wording was something like, 'It's been suggested that up to 40% of the US population could be deficient in B12.'

It would be more likely the site reporting the study, which in this case it was but even then the strongest the words got was MAY BE FLIRTING with marginal B12 status if the results of that one state were anything to go by. With how diverse the US is i would strongly doubt we'd see consistent results across all states.

Some studies can be an absolute nightmare to read but i thought this one was fairly straight forward. Now we have loads of people running about saying half the US is B12 deficient and that its been proven by studies.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2012 09:10AM by powerlifer.

powerlifer,

There really isn't sufficient variation in American diets and lifestyles to throw off extrapolations from studies such as this one. All the green smoothie drinkers in Santa Monica don't a statistical impact make.

A growing majority of Americans are basically unhealthy: those that aren't presently geriatric will eventually, and statistics are bearing these trends out, develop diabetes mellitus, heart disease and cancers. Even children. Your people have gotten famous for the abomination that is the deep fried Mars bar. I laugh bitterly and think, how late to the party you are, Scotland. At least you eat that Mars bar with builders tea, providing all those polyphenols and other antioxidants. We don't drink tea, except from a bottle and sweetened with HFCS. And we don't drink coffee, we drink the equivalent of a Mars bar melted in some weak coffee from McDonalds. We are where your culture is headed. We are the canary in the coal mine.

While this estimate about B12 probably isn't accurate, in the near future, I fear the Framingham Study will be considered not dire enough in its findings.

I have to say i disagree there is more to health than diet alone, even if everyone was on the stereotypical american diet, lifestyles, local food, economic factors would likely show different results from state to state in my opinion anyway.

The UK whilst maybe not as bad for the epic fast food exploits of the US is still a very unhealthy country as a whole. There seems to be this notion that all us Brits do is drink tea and thus we should be healthy lol. We have all the same Starbucks etc here that you's do over here so yeah the majority of coffee drinkers are now syrup sweetened super latte drinkers.

The average Scots diet here is 90% junk and processed food, especially in the poor areas. I can't see how thats any better or more glamorous than the average US SAD diet. People are just as sedentary and lazy here as many are in the US, obesity and lifestyle related degenerative diseases are not just a US problem it is a massive problem here also.

Again Tamukha im not even talking about the study here which i have said i thought was a good one albeit limited. Im talking about this quote that seems to be spreading which is widly inaccurate and has little to no basis on what the study concluded.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]



Edited 9 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2012 12:07PM by powerlifer.

Yeah, powerlifer, agree that quotes from the study aren't a good reflection of what it says.

Regarding lifestyles, I have to say that if Scotland has become a nation of slobbering junk food eaters it's only because we have succeeded in exporting our SAD lifestyle to the rest of the world so effectively. I'm not trying to play a game of evenses, mind you, it's just that the degeneration of our American way of eating/living all happened in a concerted way unique to here right after WWII. Better-Living-Through-Chemistry phoods were pushed into the marketplace, our farms started to become corporatized, and huge amounts of our taxes were parlayed into building gigantic highway systems to discourage centralized living and socializing(though ostensibly it was to put returning GIs back to work).

The UK, meanwhile, was still rationing into the 1950s--the government had noted how much healthier citizens became from wartime calorie restriction and diets high in plant foods--unlike here. Also, the UK is to this day too small a group of nations to merit the infrastructure building that promotes sedentariness to the degree that we've experienced for six + decades now.

Which is my point: You are right to be concerned about the way things are in Scotland, because we have been proving this dysfunctional way of doing things for so long that it's now become a template to be followed elsewhere.

Yeah definitley, i have no doubt that the US is worse but here is just as bad in our current time i would say. Especially when it comes to alcohol in my opinion, things are starting to get very bad here with most youngsters starting heavy drinking anything from the age 10+.

Lifestyle on average is rather poor with the majority involved in either excessive amounts of alcohol, drugs or both, poor processed junk food laden diet, sedantary lifestyle and so on.

I can even remember back to the 80s when i was born and even at that time people ate lots more fresh produce and were more inclined to cook a meal from scratch which to be fair in most cases increases the overall healthyness of a meal. But somewhere along the line things have gone mental people are turning to convient processed junk food and suffering as a consequence.

This is not to mean everyone is like this in the UK but i would say the majority live poor lifestyles and i was definitley one of them. I find it hard to find friends who don't live a life of just boozing and drugs around here. If your not into the drug scene here you are a heavy boozer, even the fitness orientated people here are all relatively big drinkers come the weekend.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2012 04:13PM by powerlifer.

Just to balance things out a bit here - i live at the other end of the country (UK) and am completely surrounded with people that strive to eat healthily. Ok - so most of them eat meat and dairy but try to find organic produce. Also they all try to grow their own vegetables and buy fairtrade and organic merchandise.

I think there are pockets of wonderfulness in the UK - I'm sure there are in America too - it's just not apparent if you've never had the good fortune to live in one or visit.

The eating habits in England vary MASSIVELY from place to place and in different economic and class structures. I agree there are hundreds of thousands of people that live on pizza and chips and cheap cider and speed but there is also a big organic, fairtrade, environmental movement as well. And the masses fall in between those two extremes with varying levels of awareness thanks to celebrity chefs, TV programmes etc and a few do check labels and try to make educated choices within their budget and understanding of the subject.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2012 05:28PM by flipperjan.

what i left out of my last post is that even in our intestines we produce b-12, and people with healthy, clean, unclogged by bread and meat intestines, have a patch of intestines where we actually absorb our own b-12! that simple.
i get b-12 from grasses and sprouts and kimchi/sauerkraut. its also important for balance, that raw vegans pay attention to iron. i have recently upped my iron a lot by including parsley in my smoothies as well as mint. both are high in iron. and make sure you add vitamin c source as this helps the assimilation.

The gut generates a very very small amount of B-12 no where near enough to meet our daily needs unfortunatly.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]

Rawlion, thanks for the tip about Forks over Knives. I've never read the study and am looking forward to hearing more about it. There really is a lot of contradicting and probably opinion-based information about B12 going around. I hope this fixes it.

Keeping it raw at [rawfoodhealthwatch.com]

Gotu kola is a good natural source of B vitamins. You can get wildcrafted and organic gotu kola herb and mix it into smoothies or add it to food.

Check out my raw food review blog at rawfoodland.com!