I have only been vegan since February, 2015. From then until a couple months ago, I was only taking 1 or 2 B12 supplements per week, if that. I was influenced by a lot of the whole food, plant based vegan advice you get from films like Forks Over Knives. In early 2016, after a re-watching of FoK, I started making an attempt to spend some time out in the sun every day, in order to allow my body to generate some vitamin D. And I would take an occasional vegan D3 supplement if I had not had any sun for a few days. At a certain point I became aware of the nutrient K2 and started taking a vegan form of those, derived from natto once in a while too.
Then I read this article. Now I view those 2.7 years as my time spent in La La Land and take a sublingual B12 every day without fail. Sometimes I even take two, one in the evening and one at night. I take vegan D3 every day, unless I get a lot of sun that day, which would never happen because I live too far up north. I take a capsule of iodine every day, and always use iodized salt for cooking rather than sea salt or other kinds of salt. I also have some more bottles of supplements in my arsenal which I don't take every day. These include vegan DHA & EPA, the aforementioned vegan K2, and these vegan cal-mag multivitamins which have large amounts of calcium and magnesium and smaller amounts of B12, K2, iodine and other nutrients. I couldn't find supplements that were just calcium at the store I shop at for supplements.
Also, another thing I started doing after getting on this supplement kick, is eating unsulphured blackstrap molasses several times per week. I make a lot of dishes that consist of some kind of rice or grain blend with roasted vegetables, or roasted potatoes with other roasted vegetables, especially with roasted onions, and I know this sounds weird but I drizzle a small amount of blackstrap molasses on my food as a condiment, along with other condiments, such as Earth Balance spread, and this Cajun seasoning I like called Slap Ya Mama. When you use the blackstrap molasses in small amounts with other condiments and seasonings, you don't really taste it at all. If you eat it alone it tastes like black licorice. But the reason I try to eat a lot of it is that it has high amounts of calcium and iron in it, as well as a bunch of other nutrients. It's really good for you. If I remember correctly, you absorb iron more easily if it is taken with a source of vitamin c, and onions have tons of vitamin C, more than in oranges, so having the blackstrap molasses with roasted onions is a really good thing.
Here are some things I learned:
mcg is an abbreviation of microgram
mg is an abbreviation milligram
know the difference!
That article I linked to says to take 90 micrograms of iodine per day. The bottle of iodine supplements I bought is "12.5mg" in each capsule. So the first day I took 3 of them, thinking that I was only taking 1/3 of what VeganRD recommends, but actually I was taking like 75,000 times the recommended daily amount.
K2 is an important nutrient that is not found in vegan diets. Most vegans don't worry about it and even VeganRD doesn't mention it. There is a lot of K1 in dark leafy greens and your body can make its own K2 from K1, but not everyone's body the same ability to manufacture K2 from K1 and so that's why I take K2 once in a while, about twice per week.
D3 is much better than D2, but almost all D3 sold is derived from wool. There is one brand I know of that makes vegan D3, but you have to go to a vitamin store to get it, or get it online. Basically, with all supplements, if it doesn't say vegan on the bottle, it isn't vegan because that is a very good marketing claim for supplement companies and if it is vegan, they say so.
All of the supplements I take, except for the sublingual B12, have to be taken right after you eat. I don't know why that is, but they do. I think it helps with absorption.
Getting back to Forks over Knives, the nutritionists in that film, who also appear in many other vegan documentaries, could all be described as 'anti-supplement' and they even make rather light of the need for B12. They say for example that vitamin D supplements are dangerous, or that the effects of taking them are not fully understood, and that you should go out and get some sun every day instead of taking supplements. There is probably some truth to that, so, I just take one D3 capsule per day, even though the bottle says to take 2 per day. But I live in a place where we get severely cold winters and I just cannot expose enough of my skin in that cold to get any sun, so I have to take the supplements.
Also, lest anyone think that going back to an omnivore diet would be better than taking vegan supplements, let me say this, there are antioxidants in tobacco, but that doesn't make it good for you. When you eat meat, dairy, eggs, etc. sure, you are getting a lot of needed nutrients, but you are getting a load of saturated fat and cholesterol, which increases your risk for heart disease by a bunch. If it is processed meat, such as bacon, deli meat, hot dogs or pepperoni, you are increasing your chance of getting colon cancer by a high percentage, I believe it is 18%. If you eat red meat, you are also increasing your cancer risk. If it is non-organic meat, you are getting all of the pesticides used in the production of the feed crop that those animals ate, due to bio-accumulation, but unlike non-organic produce, the pesticides cannot be washed off.
Also, if you do feel that eating animals is necessary, and that supplements are bad for you or too much work, maybe you should take up eating crickets. Crickets are animals, are very nutritious and can be farmed 'humanely' by yourself in an aquarium in your bed room. There are also companies that farm crickets for human consumption and will sell them to you by mail order freeze dried or baked into cookies etc. I say this because the sentience of insects isn't as definite as that of higher animals routinely eaten and they are better suited to cramped conditions. However, I do not believe this is necessary, at all. It is just that if people are going to eat animals, I believe it is better if they eat insects rather than cows, pigs, dogs, chickens, cats, fish etc. It may seem strange to a westerner that I included dogs and cats in there but their consumption is more common in the east. It would seem strange to someone from India that I included cows in there, because to an Indian, eating a cow is just like eating a dog or cat.
Then I read this article. Now I view those 2.7 years as my time spent in La La Land and take a sublingual B12 every day without fail. Sometimes I even take two, one in the evening and one at night. I take vegan D3 every day, unless I get a lot of sun that day, which would never happen because I live too far up north. I take a capsule of iodine every day, and always use iodized salt for cooking rather than sea salt or other kinds of salt. I also have some more bottles of supplements in my arsenal which I don't take every day. These include vegan DHA & EPA, the aforementioned vegan K2, and these vegan cal-mag multivitamins which have large amounts of calcium and magnesium and smaller amounts of B12, K2, iodine and other nutrients. I couldn't find supplements that were just calcium at the store I shop at for supplements.
Also, another thing I started doing after getting on this supplement kick, is eating unsulphured blackstrap molasses several times per week. I make a lot of dishes that consist of some kind of rice or grain blend with roasted vegetables, or roasted potatoes with other roasted vegetables, especially with roasted onions, and I know this sounds weird but I drizzle a small amount of blackstrap molasses on my food as a condiment, along with other condiments, such as Earth Balance spread, and this Cajun seasoning I like called Slap Ya Mama. When you use the blackstrap molasses in small amounts with other condiments and seasonings, you don't really taste it at all. If you eat it alone it tastes like black licorice. But the reason I try to eat a lot of it is that it has high amounts of calcium and iron in it, as well as a bunch of other nutrients. It's really good for you. If I remember correctly, you absorb iron more easily if it is taken with a source of vitamin c, and onions have tons of vitamin C, more than in oranges, so having the blackstrap molasses with roasted onions is a really good thing.
Here are some things I learned:
mcg is an abbreviation of microgram
mg is an abbreviation milligram
know the difference!
That article I linked to says to take 90 micrograms of iodine per day. The bottle of iodine supplements I bought is "12.5mg" in each capsule. So the first day I took 3 of them, thinking that I was only taking 1/3 of what VeganRD recommends, but actually I was taking like 75,000 times the recommended daily amount.
K2 is an important nutrient that is not found in vegan diets. Most vegans don't worry about it and even VeganRD doesn't mention it. There is a lot of K1 in dark leafy greens and your body can make its own K2 from K1, but not everyone's body the same ability to manufacture K2 from K1 and so that's why I take K2 once in a while, about twice per week.
D3 is much better than D2, but almost all D3 sold is derived from wool. There is one brand I know of that makes vegan D3, but you have to go to a vitamin store to get it, or get it online. Basically, with all supplements, if it doesn't say vegan on the bottle, it isn't vegan because that is a very good marketing claim for supplement companies and if it is vegan, they say so.
All of the supplements I take, except for the sublingual B12, have to be taken right after you eat. I don't know why that is, but they do. I think it helps with absorption.
Getting back to Forks over Knives, the nutritionists in that film, who also appear in many other vegan documentaries, could all be described as 'anti-supplement' and they even make rather light of the need for B12. They say for example that vitamin D supplements are dangerous, or that the effects of taking them are not fully understood, and that you should go out and get some sun every day instead of taking supplements. There is probably some truth to that, so, I just take one D3 capsule per day, even though the bottle says to take 2 per day. But I live in a place where we get severely cold winters and I just cannot expose enough of my skin in that cold to get any sun, so I have to take the supplements.
Also, lest anyone think that going back to an omnivore diet would be better than taking vegan supplements, let me say this, there are antioxidants in tobacco, but that doesn't make it good for you. When you eat meat, dairy, eggs, etc. sure, you are getting a lot of needed nutrients, but you are getting a load of saturated fat and cholesterol, which increases your risk for heart disease by a bunch. If it is processed meat, such as bacon, deli meat, hot dogs or pepperoni, you are increasing your chance of getting colon cancer by a high percentage, I believe it is 18%. If you eat red meat, you are also increasing your cancer risk. If it is non-organic meat, you are getting all of the pesticides used in the production of the feed crop that those animals ate, due to bio-accumulation, but unlike non-organic produce, the pesticides cannot be washed off.
Also, if you do feel that eating animals is necessary, and that supplements are bad for you or too much work, maybe you should take up eating crickets. Crickets are animals, are very nutritious and can be farmed 'humanely' by yourself in an aquarium in your bed room. There are also companies that farm crickets for human consumption and will sell them to you by mail order freeze dried or baked into cookies etc. I say this because the sentience of insects isn't as definite as that of higher animals routinely eaten and they are better suited to cramped conditions. However, I do not believe this is necessary, at all. It is just that if people are going to eat animals, I believe it is better if they eat insects rather than cows, pigs, dogs, chickens, cats, fish etc. It may seem strange to a westerner that I included dogs and cats in there but their consumption is more common in the east. It would seem strange to someone from India that I included cows in there, because to an Indian, eating a cow is just like eating a dog or cat.
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And it's expensive.
