How a nutritionist thinks we should get B12
I can’t believe this ‘stocking filler’ article in Good Health in the Daily Mail today. I can’t find it on line, but I have a paper copy next to me (p47 November 9th 2010)…
There’s a small article called “Vitamin Maths” where Angela Dowden, nutritionist, advises Daily Mail readers how to get their vitamin B12. B12 is an interesting vitamin, as it’s the only one found exclusively in animal foods. That tells me straight away that we need to eat some animal foods – vegans need to take a supplement or an injection, which isn’t the natural way to consume B12. I was a veggie for 20 years, so I do sympathise with the animal argument, but I do think we need to do as much as we can to be healthy ourselves.
Anyway – the article written by Ms Dowden (and there are pictures to help you out) says that one creme egg plus 2 grilled cod fish fingers will give you 1 microgram of B12. The creme egg delivering 0.4mcg of B12 and the breaded fish fingers delivering the remaining 0.6mcg. I don’t know if this is true – I don’t eat processed food. I’ll assume that it is. However, I’m trying to think if there is a less healthy way to get vitamin B12 – you would surely be better off going vegan and taking a B12 injection than getting your daily need of B12 in this format!
The creme egg ingredients are: Milk Chocolate: Milk, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass, Vegetable Fat, Emulsifiers: E442 and Soya Lecithin, Flavourings. Fondant: (48%) Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Invert Sugar Syrup, Dried Egg White, Flavouring, Colour: Sunset Yellow.
The main source of B12 in there is the milk – so drink milk! (The dried egg white sounds gross, but may provide some). The creme egg delivers 170 calories and you would only need 60 calories worth of milk (100 grams) to get the same 0.4mcg of B12 for the day – and that’s real milk – not the low fat rubbish.
Milk, however, is still not a great source of B12 (hence how even vegetarians struggle to get enough of this nutrient) – meat is far better. 6 grams of liver, at a tiny 7 calories, will deliver your entire 1mcg recommended daily amount (which is still based on minimal basics, not optimal health). As Sally Fallon Morell said – why are we only allowed a certain level of nutrition?!
Moving on to the fish fingers – I checked a sample on line in a grocery store. The ingredients were: Cod fillet (58%), crumb coating. Crumb coating contains wheat flour, palm oil, water, potato starch, wheat starch, salt, yeast, turmeric, mustard powder, natural colours paprika extract and curcumin, pepper extract, emulsifier mono- and diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids. I’m not big on this calorie lark but did a bit of research and 2 fingers seem to come in at around 110.
Again – the only goodness is in the real food – the fish. Swap your 110 calories and c. 20 ingredients for one sardine and you get 1.1mcg of B12 for 25 calories.
So we have 280 calories of processed rubbish, and more ingredients than you can count or a handful of grams of liver for a handful of calories or one sardine for 25 calories. This is why people are choosing to take their health into their own hands (as I have done). This is what gets nutritionists a bad name. Please Ms Dowden – people should be eating real food, not man-made processed food. This is not good advice.
9 Responses to “How a nutritionist thinks we should get B12”
Comments
Read below or add a comment...
Please feel free to leave a comment. For personal diet & health questions, please visit The Harcombe Diet Club Forum.
Keep in touch
My Books
Can't wait for the post? Full versions of all books are available as instant downloads.
Instant access now >> Click here for more info
Intermittent Fasting. Free Special Report. Get the facts behind the claims.
This is a free eBook for you to enjoy and to share freely with friends and colleagues.
The article in the Daily Fail pretty much sums up the state of the country – Having processed foods pushed at us from all angles.
Your blog is a welcome breath of fresh air!
Keep up the fantastic work!
Eat food as nature intended it and the vitamins and minerals look after themselves!
I think most people in the developed world simply have forgotten how to cook. For a lot of people fish fingers or other ready-made, processed food are a much easier option then a piece of liver as they wouldn’t know how to prepare it. Re-educating people on preparing their own food – therefore knowing what they are eating – is paramount. The Daily Mail article certainly has the wrong focus thus giving a very bad and dangerous message to its readers.
As for cream eggs, they are not just nutritionally insufficient but it must be the superhigh sugar content (plus the pure taste of sugar) what makes them highly addictive. I used to buy 6-packs and eat them in one go and at the end of cream egg season I would stock up to last for another few weeks! Suggesting that they could be eaten for their vitamin content is irresponsible.
Many thanks for this – I think you’re right, which is why the stuff that Jamie Oliver is doing is so necessary and wonderful.
I did a radio interview recently where someone said staying off processed food didn’t seem like much fun and I said food addiction is even less fun! I come across so many people who meet every part of the definition of food addiction and they are going through turmoil on a daily basis. ‘No creme eggs’ is so much easier than trying to stick to one!
Sounds like you’re doing really well :-)
Kudos for the Sally Fallon shoutout! She is one of my biggest heroes. Anyone who finds this article interesting should check out her book Nourishing Traditions. It changed my life.
Zoe, I definitely agree that eating real, healthy, natural foods that you prepare at home and avoiding processed food is much more fun than eating whatever processed foods you want. It may be challenging to teach yourself how to cook when you’ve never done it before, but it is far more challenging to deal with low energy, irritability, depression, bloating, stomach cramps, severe cravings, brain fog, and unwanted weight gain on a daily basis. I lost 35 pounds by eating more healthy fats (butter, coconut oil, fatty meats, dairy, extra-virgin olive oil) and switching from a vegetarian to an omnivorous diet, and I no longer suffer from the health problems I used to have. I love the way I eat and have discovered that I love cooking as well.
Before I began eating more fat, I was eating what was, by all mainstream standards, a perfect diet. Mostly whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, lots of vegetables, no meat, and very little fat. However, I felt like crap all the time, and every night I had uncontrollable cravings for ice cream, which I usually succumbed to. My body was trying to tell me that I needed more fat! Now that I eat plenty of healthy natural fats (and avoid rancid industrial vegetable oils), I no longer have any cravings to speak of.
Thank you, Zoe, for getting this message out to so many people. Its very admirable to see someone who did their own research and found out the truth for themselves. Way to go!
Hi Laurel – thank you so much for your lovely post. I saw Sally Fallon at the first European Western Price conference in March 2010 and she was utterly inspirational. She has this amazing aura about her – a warmth and calmness like I’ve never seen and yet the fire and passion and commitment is all there. An incredible person who is doing the world a great service by speaking up for mother nature and warning about the processed food industry. You and I are part of the bottom up revolution that she talks about – survival of the wisest!
Just demolished loads of pork chops and crackling cooked in butter with some very nice organic greens, also in butter. It’s the only way to live.
You may enjoy this from Fox & Friends 15 November 2010
Very best wishes – Zoe
Hi Zoe, your blog is so interesting! I am currently doing the Harcombe diet and I’m 28, the age you started battling your food addictions I believe! I don’t have much to lose but I am determined to become healthier and stop obsessing about certain foods! I am finding so much out about food and know that my eating habits have changed forever after just three weeks. I read more and more from you and on the blog and I tweak the diet for me each day and it’s actually really enjoyable e.g. I just read that having milk throughout the day with decaf tea is increasing my carb intake!
Anyway, I was just wondering why you mentioned how many calories were in each food you were suggesting? Is this for people unfamiliar with the Harcombe Diet? Or for reference? Or should I sometimes be concerned with calories?
Much warmth Alice
Hi Alice! Many thanks for your lovely note. Thankfully, 28 was the age I overcame my food addictions – putting everything I’d learned into practice. It was the 12 years before that that weren’t much fun!
Great question on the calories – I did a whole “Diet & Health Today” newsletter (that’s our club fortnightly newsletter) on what I think about calories. The bottom line is that they are fuel – petrol for our tank and that’s how we should view them. When people talk to me about needing to get some fuel inside them, rather than fearing calories, I know that they’ve ‘got there’!
However, you wouldn’t put petrol in a diesel car and we shouldn’t put the wrong fuel in our bodies. So I am anti “empty calories”. Our fuel needs to nourish us – that’s why we eat. The average Brit is eating 400 calories of sugar and 730 calories of flour (see this blog) each and every day. That’s 400 calories with no nutrients (other than carbs that we don’t need) and 730 calories with so little nutrition that flour is invariably fortified – by law in some cases. In The Obesity Epidemic I go through an exercise replacing those c. 1100 calories and seeing if we could get all the minimum daily allowances (joke term in itself) with a different basket of foods for the same calories. With liver, eggs, sardines, real milk, oats, sunflower seeds, a couple of dark green veg, cocoa powder, we can get the minimal amount of vitamins and minerals that it is considered that we need and we will feel indescribly healthier swapping real food for empty calories.
I am interested in things like – we need to eat calories ‘with a job to do’ – those that can meet our basal metabolic needs; we need to eat calories that nourish us and we need to avoid the calories that are designed by food manufacturers to be so morish that we will crave them and continually want more of them.
A calorie is not a calorie in so many ways – don’t count calories but do make your calories count!
Check out our club – we have fun in there! http://www.theharcombedietclub.com
Ciao – Zoe
Hi, just heard your interview on Jimmy Moore so I headed on over here.
I live in the UK and heard on the BBC breakfast news the resident GP, when asked what is a good form of dietary B12, answer ‘wheat germ’. Pardon me? Maybe she meant ‘fortified cereal’. I think the BBC are scared of advising people to eat meat. Of course as a state run institution I guess they are going to tow the government line.
Anyway, I’m off now to read around your blog.
Nice to ‘meet’ you.
Hi Jo! Nice to meet you too! Ha ha on the B12 – cereal or soya milk – both fortified. And then we had the interim Chief Medical Officer for England this am saying eat 5-a-day – why?! I think I’ll drop her a line and ask her…
Lovely to hear of another Jimmy fan and real food radical!
Very best wishes – Zoe