Some consumers may choose veganism, or a pescatarian diet, but meat, eggs and milk, offer crucial sources of much-needed nutrients which cannot easily be obtained from plant-based foods, a new report issued on Tuesday by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says.
Yes, that is why vegans supplement. There are certain nutrients you can't get from plants, like B12, retinol/provitamin A, heme iron. However comparatively expensive pharmaceutical supplements are not available in the poorest regions of the planet. So if people aren't eating animal foods and surviving entirely off of grains/staples like rice or maize meal if they get to eat at all, even if it is fortified, they will suffer from macronutrient deficiencies. Which is the point that the article is making.
If you live in a developed nation (and I guess most hexbear posters do) you don't need to worry about any of this, you're probably getting enough food in the first place, and if you're vegan you most likely already know about the necessary supplementation of nutrients like vitamin B12 and potentially others.
Did anyone bother to even read the article before resorting to cheap jokes? Malnutrition in developing countries is a serious issue. In my country 1 in 4 children experience stunted growth as a result of malnutrition. There's a reason Xi said China's greatest accomplishment was feeding 1.4 billion people and that the world should ask no more of them after that.
Another interesting part is the UN coming out against the bunk science of the 60s that stated saturated fats = bad for health in any context.
b12 is a sticky one, you can pretty much only get it from fortified foods
but you can get vitamin a from carrots, sweet potatoes, dried apricots, kale, cantaloupe, butternut squash, spinach, red peppers, papaya, tomatoes
i've been vegan for 16 years and the only time i have taken supplements was when i was in prison, where they were provided to me
too expensive otherwise
Yeah you can get vitamin A from plant foods, usually in beta carotene form. Though I think there are other forms of it as well. But the body must first convert this to retinol before using it. If you are eating enough food, this isn't really a problem for most people, but if you are at risk of starvation or anemic, it is an issue.
B12 can be obtained though food containing nutritional yeast like Marmite.
i feel that the stop starving people thing should come first before the animal agriculture is good actually thing
yep, that's how i get mine
It's just B12. Which many corpse munchers are also very deficient in. It's not even present naturally in animal secretion and corpses, the victims are fed supplements instead of fortifying rice, plant milks and whatever
Rice is already fortified in most developing nations. But there are limits to what is possible. In terms of values here, most governments are targeting around 0.75-1.25 micrograms of vitamin B12 per kilogram of rice. That's about half the recommended daily amount. Fortified cereals usually fair much better with regards to B12 content.
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Isn't there the one gmo rice that has some nutrient like this?
Yes, there is rice that is genetically modified, fortified, or both, to improve it's nutritional profile. Where I live, pretty much all the grains and staple foods you buy at the supermarket are fortified with nutrients to fight malnutrition.
But at the end of the day rice is rice, flour is flour and corn is corn. There is only so much that can be done. One of the limits of fortification of iron for instance, is that only non heme iron can be used in most cases. This is less absorbed by the body than heme iron. Not something most healthy people eating enough whole foods have to think about, but if a person is already eating too little food, stuff like that matters.