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Comment by 52-6F-62 | Hacker News Reader

B12-deficient crowd here—not just mental health. The potential impact a lack of B12 can have on you physically is catastrophic.

I have to be mindful that I make myself eat a steak once in a while. On a regular day my skin lacks a lot of colour these days. If I forget to eat the right things I start to fog up, emotions waver, mood falters, and can even get clumsy. (Couple this with some latent pancreatic problems and it's worse)

The unfortunate thing about it, is it tends to progress even if you're making an effort unless you're making enough of an effort and it can be so creeping and insidious as to leave you unaware until you've done irreparable harm to yourself, either by diet or a physical defect.

Horrible stuff, this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559316/ (read: your body will more or less start falling apart)

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If you eat meat from industry chances are that your b12 vitamin comes from supplements. B12 supplement is very very cheap and everyone should supplement.

While I agree that taking some B12 supplement is probably a good idea for a lot of people, I don't think statements like that can be made so readily.

For one, nutritional studies tend to point to whole foods being the way to go to gain the nutrients required by your body because of the vastly complex interplay of absorption and the related catalysts. And in many cases, it's easy to overdo it on specific vitamins, especially when they're isolated and concentrated. (https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h..., https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/WYNTK-Consumer/)

Secondly, I'm not sure what your first statement is intended to mean. When I eat meat, it's from usually chickens, turkeys, some fish, crustaceans, and occasionally western pig and cow (and even more occasionally, game animals).

As always, it's something each person should go over with their doctor—especially vegans or vegetarians who don't want to begin (or return to) eating meat.

What the parent probably meant:

B12 is synthesized by bacteria, algae and yeasts, not directly by the animals we eat. There's a theory that due to the conditions that most animals are farmed in nowadays - the environment and standardized and monotonous feed - they would be B12-deficient themselves if not for supplementation.

So most of the B12 you find in factory-farmed animals might be from supplements in animal feed. Just like how farmed salmon and eggs have a nice color because of supplementation. Check this out: https://nutrition.basf.com/global/en/animal-nutrition/use-ar...

That may be, but the mechanism through which B12 is absorbed in humans is the same whether or not the animal received a supplement or not. It's the process of uptake through the diet that is the part that is concerning to humans.

More simply, the mechanisms involved in uptake by eating beef that received a B12 supplement is still very different from directly supplementing so the comparison should never be drawn.

As an aside: I would be skeptical of any chemical company's recommendations to the agricultural industry at large...

Here's another chemical company that recommends supplementation of B12 for cows:

https://www.dsm.com/anh/en_US/products/vitamins/vitamin-nutr...

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