| ruimartiniman said: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-8LETe8gdrecEhxaGRWVVJRbWc/edit?pli=1 |
I watched about the first half of the documentary. It contains a lot of misonformation. An egregrious example is one of the people interviewed suggested that we need to eat meat to get vitamin B12. Nope. Vitamin B12 is a by-product from bacteria, bacteria that lives in the bodies of humans (and other animals) and produces it for us. The only reason we have a problem with it today is we've made the soil to sterile with monoculture, pesticides, herbicides, and the like. They now give vitamin B12 supplements to livestock because of this problem, meaning that when you eat meat you're actually eating supplemented B12 in whole or in part. In North America, a higher percentage of omnivores are now B12 deficient than vegans.
The documentary then suggests we used to eat a lot of meat by pointing to a site that had bones from tens of thousands of animals, some of which showed evidence of being eaten. OK, cool. But do the math. Spread those animals over hundreds/thousands of families for thousands/tens of thousands of years, and the actual amount of meat consumed is crazy tiny. Analysis of fossilized human stool suggests most pre-history humans were about 99% vegan. Analysis of human remains of those that ate a lot more meat (such as mummified inuit) show evidence of the animal products in their diets causing disease.
There's more, lots more, misinformation in this documentary, but those are a couple that stood out for me. There's no nutrient that is exclusive to eating animal products, nor any health benefit.
