Where and how do animals NATURALLY get vitamin B12?
Today I want to talk to you about a nutrient essential for health and fertility: Vitamin B12…
Vitamin B12 is essential to maintain the health of the neurons and the blood. It also supports the formation of the genetic material in all cells.
As states Chris Kresser: “B12 deficiency has been associated with or can actually cause premature aging or logical disorders that are similar in presentation to MS or even Parkinson’s, brain fog, memory problems, cognitive decline; stroke, heart disease, and other vascular problems, primarily due to elevated homocysteine levels—B12 is required to convert homocysteine back into methionine; developmental or learning disabilities in children; impaired immune function, autoimmune disease, and cancer; male and female infertility; and numerous other symptoms because B12 plays a very, very important role in the body”.
The “normal” range is considered to be between 250-1000, however, the IDEAL value in your blood is at least 450. That being said, measuring SERUM B12 might not even be the best way to know your true vitamin B12 status. Chris Kresser, in the above-cited article, explains all of that in more detail.
Vitamin B12 is ONLY found in animal foods, especially the organs. Even studies favoring vegan diets acknowledge that supplementation with vitamin B12 is essential because plants do not contain it.
For me, the fact that a diet depends on a man-made substance completely disqualifies it as the “ideal human diet”. Common sense tells me that it cannot be what Existence intended for us, or do you think it would forget to foresee a natural source for a nutrient without which we would get seriously ill?
Some people try to twist reality to accommodate their beliefs by arguing that animal foods only contain B12 because they are supplemented by the industry.
While this is true, the way factories farm animals is definitely NOT the way nature intended. If cows are raised on pasture, as they are supposed to, they eat herbs and grass that naturally comes with Earth, which ideally is full of microorganisms. These bacteria then produce vitamin B12 by fermenting all that plant matter in the herbivores complex digestive system. It is when animals are kept in stables, fed on soy and corn, which is NOT their natural diet, that this does not occur and they have to receive supplements. It might also occur if the animals pasture on degenerated soil.
It is the UNNATURAL way of eating and living that makes it necessary to supplement animals – and also humans (many people eating animal foods do not absorb B12 well because of stress-induced low stomach acidity or conditions like SIBO, or even genetic mutations, that impede proper assimilation, and of course the quality of the animal foods also plays a role)!
In fact, herbivores are the ONLY animals that you can raise on pasture alone, IF the soil is fertile, without the need for ANY additional feed and definitely without any artificial supplement. This is what regenerative grazing does.
Omnivores, like chickens, receive their vitamin B12 from eating B12-rich bugs (the bugs also produce it through bacterial interaction). Fish receive it from eating plankton (microorganisms floating in the sea that interact with bacteria).
Humans are NOT able to do it by eating plants alone, even if those plants are dirty (brrr), because of a different digestive system. We NEED animals as an intermediate, for vitamin B12, but also for other nutrients.
And if that is true… what beliefs would have to change?
