UNCOVERING THE VITAMIN B12 MYTHS part 1: Mushrooms: the flesh of the Gods 🍄

Whilst I was transitioning from vegetarianism to veganism, eggs were the last thing I gave up because of the B12 controversy, I know there are supplements and fortified foods but i'm also skeptical about some of these products as I prefer to eat as naturally as possible.

One day in Autumn last year I just stopped eating eggs for a week and my body started feeling really depleted and I got this intense craving for mushrooms. The body is extremely complex and I do not underestimate its power and natural instinct is what keeps us alive and functioning.

I went to the local vegetable co-operative and brought a massive bag of chestnut mushrooms, I didn't wipe off much of the dirt, fried them up and made a mushroom sandwich. These mushrooms where so tasty, I kept saying over and over in my mind 'I swear I can taste the B12 in these', I know I ate some dirt, and I read somewhere eating dirt is how our primitive selves would have been consuming B12 on a regular basis, and this is why modern man is often deficient due to our sterilized environments. Despite all this I swear the mushrooms where talking to me, telling me that there was B12 in their flesh, if you ever tried magic mushrooms you will agree that mushroom do speak to people and i'm not crazy!

I had to ask Google, I mean I'd been conditioned by the information on the internet to believe that it is only ever present in animal products but there were links to pages telling me studies have shown there is B12 in mushrooms, yes they are only small doses 2-4% of the RDI
but that doesn't mean we shouldn't eat them as a viable source, primitive man would have been gathering as many as possible and drying them to store for later.

Our bodies store greater amounts of vitamin B12 than they do for any other vitamins; an estimated 2000 – 4000 µg, the majority of which is found in the liver. Theoretically speaking, the body could function on a minimum provision of 1 µg per day for up to 10 years. This is one reason why the serious effects of a vitamin B12 deficiency can take several years to become apparent. *

In some respects I disagree with this statement because like I mentioned before I can sense when I need more B12 in my system but according to this there is no way I have a deficiency, I have eaten animal based products for almost 30 years of my life, so I must have enough B12 stored! Also if you are vegan and regularly consuming fortified foods you should theoretically have enough B12 stores to last you several years. The RDA of B12 is 2.4µg Because of this I don't think it's necessary to be taking 1000µg supplement tablets on a daily basis, but we should regularly be topping up in small doses as standard practice. However you will need to take supplements temporarily if you have a diagnosed deficiency. Deficiencies are caused by multiple factors not just by what we choose to consume but occur according to our lifestyle choices, for instance,

Humans living in modern industrialized nations typically ingest multiple courses of oral antibiotics over a lifetime, reducing or eliminating the population of B12-producing bacteria residing in the small intestine. All of our prehistoric ancestors would have been breast fed and probably kissed often, which transmits flora from one generation to another, and this transmission would not have been interrupted by antibiotic treatments. **

It is a primal instinct to keep our B12 levels topped up but our primal selves probably didn't have to give it much thought due to their inter-connectivity with nature, yes they would of eaten animal based products from time to time but they were luxury products and not consumed in the high doses we see today with huge dairy and meat farms. This type of animal agriculture has become the primary cause of the destruction of our planet on a mass scale. Maybe it's time we looked at our ancient selves, so we can save our beautiful planet and look after own bodies more efficiently. It's thought that our ancient ancestors had a lot more availability of consuming natural plant based B12 than we do in our modern world.

Fermentation of plant foods, particularly fruits, occurs spontaneously in nature, providing another route by which our ancestors may have ingested B12-producing lactobacilli. Our ancestors almost certainly consumed any edible wild mushrooms and all of the plants they ate grew in soils teaming with bacteria and fertilized by fermented organic wastes, providing another B12 source.
All of this information suggests that modern hygiene, indoor lifestyles, antibiotics, and use of chemical rather than biomass fertilizers in farming have reduced the amount of B12 available to humans in modern urban environments from non-animal sources.

Thus, the low availability of B12 from non-animal sources in modern urban environments is an artifact not reflective of preindustrial environments, and it appears probable that our prehistoric ancestors had more non-animal sources present in their environment. **

Mushrooms also contain vitamin D when grown in direct sunlight, another vitamin many people are deficient in especially in cold weather countries. You can leave your store brought mushrooms on a window sill on a sunny day and they will still absorb the vitamin D even after they have been picked. Mushroom aren't technically a vegetable or a fruit either, they are an entirely different thing, the flesh of the God's...

Because it is from a different food kingdom, the mushroom has a very different nutrition profile and has antioxidants and bioactive compounds not found in plants. For example, it has more B vitamins that found in vegetables, it is a good source of essentials mineral like selenium and has powerful antioxidants like ergothioneine.

The mushroom evolved at a different time to plants (Carroll 2001). They arrived on earth after plants and before animals. So, please keep eating your vegetables, while adding mushrooms to the meal to take advantage of its unique health benefits. In fact, the latest research indicates that it is a smart decision to eat mushrooms daily as they have a positive influence on blood lipids, blood glucose, immunity and weight control, and offer many essential nutrients and antioxidants. ***

I moved to Catalunia because of my natural vegan lifestyle choice, I found that there are more plant based products available here all year round at accessible prices. I'm really lucky in that there is a wide variety of mushrooms, particularly in Autumn to early winter, some of these mushrooms are very obscure to me and some look totally unappetizing but many seem to be picked wild from the mountains. I still need to venture out of my comfort zone to try out all these amazing varieties, knowing I will benefit from a B12 dose is defiantly a motivator and I hope you are also inspired to use mushrooms in your diet everyday like our ancient ancestors once did.

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*http://www.b12-vitamin.com/body-store/
**http://donmatesz.blogspot.co.at/2011/12/vitamin-b12-and-human-nutritional.html
***http://www.southmill.com/mushrooms-myth-facts/

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