About reading 'announcements', plants and B12 (again!) :)

[Korn]

Hi, most of the time I post whatever I post as messages. We also have a FAQ (see above) and so called 'announcements'. Do you ever read these announcements? Have you for example seen this (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/announcement.php?f=22&announcementid=4) announcement, in the subforum about possible vegan B12 sources, posted last year – or should I stick to using normal messages? I have a slight feeling that announcements are ignored, even if they get a special placement near the top of the page...

[Kim[ba]]

To be perfectly honest with you, no I don't. I don't read the announcements or stickies. Infact one of my forum pet peev's is to see a forum that has half a page of stickies (ussually describing forum etiquite, or bizzare posting rules).

[Seaside]

Yes, I read announcements and stickies. The stickies here are good!
I have a feeling, though, Korn, that when you post, people read! :)

[veganblue]

I have to say I am confused - I have never understood what the 'sticky' label meant or what would constitute as an announcement?! I may be reading them but just don't understand what it is that I am reading :o

[tails4wagging]

Yes, I agree with seaside, I read the threads started by Korn.

I dont tend to look at announcements.

[eve]

Yes I read announcements, what I avoid is the Chit-Chat thread and the Recipes thread. Also if a posting is l-o-n-g, I may skim it rather than read the lot. But I certainly prefer threads that are intelligent and worth reading.

[Korn]

A sticky label means that the thread in question will remain at the top of the list, even it has not been posted into for a while. Announcement appear above the stickies, and are used for - announcing important messages.

Actually, I realized that they have a counter too, and I can see that while 359 people have seen the announcement about our chat room and the board guidelines in the main forum, only 27 people have read the announcement about plants as a possible B12 source.

It's important for me that our readers don't think that I insist that every site that report that some plant contain B12 always is right, or that people who worry that long term vegans might to little B12 always are wrong.

But...

1) Most plants (99% ?) have never been tested for B12
2) The way plants are tested for B12 often involves heating the plant to a temperature above a level that is B12-safe
3) Multivitmains also contains B12 analogues
4) Animal foods also contain B12 analogues
5) B12 fortified food contains B12 analogues
6) IIt has been documented that B12 deficiency have been cured by giving people a mix of 5% active B12 and 95% inactive B12 analogues
7) I'm trying to provide as much background material as possible about elements in our lives and environment that kills B12 in water, food and soil
8) Sstudies show that up to 40% of all meat eaters are in the low B12 range or B12 deficient.
9) Healthy vegans seem to need less B12 than others, so maybe the RDA's for people who eat meat, junk food and a lot of other B12-killing stuff, or take medicine that destroys B12, doesn't apply to healthy vegans
10) I'm sharing all info I find, mainly from non-vegan sources, that mention plants that according to them contain B12.

I understand that if someone only read a couple of my posts believe that I'm one of these vegan fanatics that believes that B12 is never a problem for vegans if you eat spirulina or raw food. There are dozens of things that will influence if you'll become B12 deficient or not (this is true for meat eaters as well), so there are no simple explanations.

I read somewhere that 2.5% of the US population are vegetarians, and a third of these are vegans or people who for some reason don't eat animal products. If the same numbers are true for the world population, there are 53,717,761 vegans on our planet. If 9% of all people are B12 deficient , this would indicate that there are 4,834,598 B12 deficient vegans. Yes, almost 5 million B12 deficient vegans in the world, based on an assumption that vegans are as likely to become B12 deficient as non-vegans.

I'll remove this thread soon, it was only meant as a quick way to find out if you read the announcement in the B12/plants forum, but I know that only 25 people have read it by checking the counter.... I think I'll put a 'sticky' post in the above mentioned subforum to let people know why I focus so much on the B12 issue and what my thoughts are.

This topic brought to my attention after I realized that a member at another board was referring to our site and said that 'some of those articles might lead a vegan who didn't know better to think they can get sufficient b12 from strawberries (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111) and bananas (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=53980#post53980)'. The same guy also wrote that 'articles suggesting vegans can get sufficient B12 from plant sources are also a bad thing'... Now, I have never said or written that you can get sufficient B12 from plant sources the way we live and the way we treat microorganisms and bacteria. But it's always fascinating with people who claim that no plants can be a reliable B12 source when most plant species have never been tested for B12 - and when there is no research on how vegans who are avoid all the B12-killers (chlorinated water etc) would perform on B12-tests.

The reason I say that people who claim that we can NOT get sufficient B12 from plants don't know what they are talking about, is that our meat eating culture has done little research on B12 in plants, the B12 analogue issue and how to live without destroying the natural B12 in food and water. Plus the reliability of some of the test methods are definitely worth looking at.

If any of you 5 million vegans that might have experienced B12 deficiency read this, please let us know a little about your case in this (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=252) thread, OK? We have tried for almost two years now to find some of the many vegans with B12-deficiency case stories out there, but haven't been very successful! Maybe the numbers are wrong? (Or maybe, for example, there are more vegans with low B12 levels, but that this doesn't cause them the same problems that B12 deficient non-vegans suffer from, because, for example, they eat a lot more folate, or in general or a lot more healthy?

Thanks. ;)