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May 28, 2018

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Vegan Pregnancy and Birth Defects

I have heard the claim that women need to eat animal products in preparation for and during pregnancy in order to prevent birth defects. Some women who abstained from all animal products during their pregnancies have given birth to babies with birth defects, and based on this, some people have concluded that this proves that eating animal products prevents birth defects or that women need to eat animals during pregnancy in order to prevent birth defects.

This blog refutes that reasoning. There is a lack of evidence that eating animal products prevents the most common birth defects. There is also a lack of evidence that dietary omnivores have a lower overall risk of birth defects than vegans. In fact, in the U.S., the vast majority of birth defects occur among babies born to women who are dietary omnivores.

Prevalence of Birth Defects

The CDC states that "Major structural or genetic birth defects affect approximately 3% of births in the United States."[1 ]

According to t…

Farewell To "Paleo"

--> I have experimented with eating a so-called “paleo” diet for at least 14 years. Although I had confidence enough in the concept to invest in self-publishing a book on putting it into practice, over this time I have endured increasing cognitive dissonance because the currently popular concept of paleo diet—animal-based, relatively high in protein and fat and relatively low in carbohydrate—conflicts with empirical nutrition knowledge accumulated over the course of 5 thousand years in both Asian and Western medicine, including a rather large body of clinical and laboratory data accumulated since the 19th century, all pointing toward humans being more adapted to a plant-dominated, high-carbohydrate diet supplying significantly less than 30% of energy from fat.

In addition, over this time period I have experienced myself, and seen in others, mostly gradual and sometimes sudden development of disorders that seem to occur regularly in people attempting to consume a high fat, ex…

Vitamin B12 and Human Nutritional Evolution

I once believed and argued that the fact that humans require vitamin B-12 provided substantial support for the idea that humans have a biological requirement for dietary meat. My reasoning went thus:

Humans require vitamin B-12, and only animal products reliably provide natural bioactive vitamin B-12, therefore we must be adapted to and dependent upon meat-eating.

I have since realized that I made a few mistakes here. Although we definitely require B-12, animal products are not the only reliable sources of natural bioactive B12, and human B-12 metabolism provides evidence that our ancestors adapted to an environment/diet that had a low availability of B-12 compared to currently recommended daily reference intakes.

Human B-12 Metabolism

Humans have enterohepatic circulation of vitamin B-12.[1 ] As noted by Herbert [2 ], this can allow an initially B-12 replete adult go 20-30 years without vitamin B-12 intake:

“The enterohepatic circulation of vitamin B-12 is very important in vitamin B-…

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