supplements???

[magslee]

I am taking a total vitamin, calcium supplement, and B12 supplements. Do I need to take an iron supplement? And what other supplements do I need?
Another question I have is that many people have been telling me that this is not a healthy diet because I won't get the nutrients I need. I have heard that many people have had to stop because their bodies couldn't handle it. Is this true? Won't supplements and eating healthy counter that? Thanks again,

Anne

[Erin Pavlina]

Many of us have heard reports of people who did not thrive on a vegan diet. I'm not sure why. It's never been made clear to me whether they were "doing it right" or not.

Do you have a copy of Becoming Vegan? Great book on vegan nutrition. I refer to my copy frequently to answer these types of questions.

[Casey]

Anyone that has to abandon a vegan diet is probably living on junk food, not eating a properly balanced diet and they’ll probably be just as unhealthy when they resume consumption of animal products. The notion that the human body can’t handle a healthy vegan diet is nonsense.

People are always telling me that so-and-so’s sister/daughter/brother/cousin was vegetarian/vegan and they were always coming down with colds/looked pale/were sickly - like no meat-eater has ever caught a cold? If the standard North American diet is so healthy why do we have such a problem with obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc, etc? That’s not to say that eliminating animal products automatically makes you healthy, but a vegan diet is not inherently unhealthy either. With the exception of B-12 you can get all the nutrients you need from a healthy, well-balanced, varied vegan diet. But taking a multivitamin helps too (just as it does meat-eaters).

A good multivitamin should contain B-12, so you shouldn’t need to take a separate B-12 supplement. You should be able to get all the iron you need from food (especially if eaten with foods rich in vitamin C, which increases iron absorption), but a general recommendation is that all premenopausal women take a multivitamin containing up to 100% of the daily value for iron. And don’t take iron at the same time as a calcium supplement because calcium inhibits the absorption of iron. You can get multivitamins with and without iron – you’d probably need to look at your whole diet and decide if you need to supplement your iron intake. Too much iron is not a good thing either. I’ve been veg*n for about 14 years and for most of that time I never took iron supplements and my iron levels (confirmed through blood tests) have always been perfectly healthy. The multivitamin that I take now happens to contain iron, but I wasn’t specifically looking to supplement my iron intake.

Apart from a good multi you shouldn’t need much else in the way of supplementation, but try to work ground flaxseed or flaxseed oil into your diet – it’s a great source of omega-3 fatty acids (tons of health benefits).

And Erin is right, “Becoming Vegan” is an excellent book and should be able to answer all your nutrition questions and more!

And as a counter argument to those telling you that a vegan diet is not healthy, the American Dietetic Association has confirmed that well-planned veg*n diets are “healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases”, and are appropriate for all stages of life.
http://www.eatright.org/Public/GovernmentAffairs/92_17084.cfm

So tell that to those meat-eaters that are trying to discourage you !
:D Good Luck!