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"Safest Source of B12"

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What’s the best way to get vitamin B12?

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Well, B12 is not made by plants;

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not made by animals either.

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It’s made by certain bacteria,

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some of which line the guts of animals,

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of which people eat and drink.

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But that’s not the best source,

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because of the baggage [br]that comes along with it.

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Just like we can’t get the iron in [br]beef without the saturated fat,

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the protein in pork without lard,

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the calcium in dairy without hormones;

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we can’t get the B12 in animals without [br]also consuming stuff we don’t want—

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like cholesterol.

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For example, to get 47 [br]micrograms of B12 from eggs,

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because the absorption is so low,

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we’d have to literally eat hundreds[br]of scrambled eggs a day.

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200 to 400 eggs a day!

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Do you know how much[br]cholesterol that would be?

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If you got all your B12 [br]from scrambled eggs,

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you’d consume 69,000 [br]milligrams of cholesterol—

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practically your entire [br]year’s worth every day.

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So, yes, chickens harbor bacteria;

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the bacteria make B12;

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some of that B12 [br]makes it into the chicken,

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and then into the egg—

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but so does the cholesterol.

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There has to be a better way!

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Why don’t the bacteria [br]in our colon make B12?

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They do, actually.

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It’s just too far downstream [br]to be absorbed.

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In one of the less appetizing but [br]more brilliant experiments in the field,

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a Dr. Callender delineated that human [br]colon bacteria make large amounts of B12.

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Although the B12 is not [br]absorbed through the colon,

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it is active.

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How do we know?

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She found some vegan [br]volunteers with B12 deficiency,

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collected their stools for 24 hours,

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and then, you guessed it,

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bon appetit!

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And it worked!

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They were cured.

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Those are some hardcore vegans.

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There has to be a better way!

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And thankfully, there is:

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fortified foods and supplements.

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Not only the safest, but [br]also the most effective.

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In the U.S. Framingham Offspring Study,

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one in six meat-eaters between [br]ages 26 to 83 were B12-deficient.

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The folks with the highest B12 levels

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weren’t the ones eating [br]the most animal products,

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but the ones taking supplements,

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and eating the most [br]fortified breakfast cereal.