My DHA arrived today!

Supplement time! I have done a lot of reading on vegan nutrition, and I am now supplementing with B12 everyday, DHA (sourced from algae) a couple times a week, and Vitamin D (D2, plant-based) when I think about it. I will be going back to iodized salt on my food when I make it to the store. It turns out iodine is very important. Of course, I also try to eat lots of natural sources of vitamins and minerals--more on those efforts another time. In this post, I wanted to share with you some of what I've been learning.


What I am beginning to think is that perhaps one reason that many of those who try vegetarian or vegan diets give them up is that they aren't properly informed about nutrition. There are plenty of celebrities in the media who talk about how they "just couldn't live on salads," or how they "just needed the protein in meat." Well, guess what? No one can live on just salad, and protein is in a lot of plant sources. Eating ethically and healthfully takes education, and I am doing my best.

We all need B12. But you don't get it from plant sources. And if you are deficient, you will have problems. So, the solution is to simply take a vitamin. Easy, right? If you have a 100mcg pill, you take it daily, and if you have a 1000mcg pill, you take it 2-3 times a week. (I learned this by reading Vegan for Life, and one of the authors, vegan dietitian Virginia Messina, has a great website with lots of good info.) However, if you have been off animal products for a while, your stores might have gotten depleted, which can be corrected by upping your B12 for just a couple of weeks, then continuing to supplement according to the guidelines above. So I've got another week and a half left of taking 2000mcg, figuring that the time I've not been eating meat, combined with nursing a baby, might have helped lower my reserves. (Disclaimer, in case some Internet crazy later decides to sue me: I am not a doctor, I am not a dietitian, check with your physician (who probably, by the way, will inexplicably never mention to you the benefits of a plant-based diet) before you try this, yadda yadda yadda...)

I think that a lot of people might actually be B12 deficient and wind up (erroneously) concluding that a vegan diet isn't for them, when a simple supplement would help them have more energy and feel better in general.

We welcome your comments, by the way, in English or español!