One of the commonest charges against a #vegan diet is that it can’t be natural or healthy, because it requires “supplements” of vitamin B12. Here’s why this argument is nonsense.
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1. Some of these so-called supplements are normal food items, as natural or unnatural as anything else we eat, such as yeast extract or yeast flakes. They are supplements in the sense that tomato ketchup is a supplement to your fish and chips.
2. Another source is fortified foods, such as fortified oat milk. Aha! Fortified! Gotcha! But how does fortified oat milk differ from the fortified breakfast cereals half the population eats? Why is extra B12 an issue, while extra niacin, riboflavin, folic acid, iron etc are not?
3. Hang on a minute. I’ve just taken a look at the Co-op cornflakes in our kitchen, that are sold for general consumption. Cornflakes must be unnatural and unhealthy. But only when eaten as part of a vegan diet. 
4. While we’re on the subject, that B12 you get from beef, milk and lamb …
5. As Raymond Williams pointed out, “nature” is the most complex word in the English language. You could argue that everything humans do is unnatural, or that everything we do is natural. In other words, this word resolves precisely nothing.
6. Nothing, or everything, is natural about the human diet. Those of us who have a choice of what we eat exercise that choice more or less consciously and carefully. A careful vegan diet is just as healthy as a careful non-vegan diet. A careless diet of any kind will harm you.
7. Touching as it is to see so many omnivores concerned about the health of vegans, and grateful as we all are for their evident concern, in view of the current dietary health of the average omnivore, wouldn’t they be better off attending to their own well-being?
#Veganuary
#Veganuary
It's wonderful to know that so many people are passionately concerned about vegans' health. Clearly we must take this at face value. It would be terrible to imagine that they were pretending to care, to score some kind of point.
