B12 from... insect droppings?

Some people claim that if vegans get B12 from plants, it's 'from insects', but vegans don't eat insects, so the reference have to be to the random insect droppings on the surface of unwashed plants.

I haven't seen any studies that confirm this (and I'm not surprised that no such study exists either :) )...

Anyway - how likely is it that this is true, or have any significant value?

Let's make a silly experiment with numbers.

The only study of insect weight I'm aware of, found that the mean weight of some 30 studied insects in Malaya was 0.14 mcg. Now, only a tiny part of humans, birds and animals are B12 molecules, so I suspect that the same is true for insects.

A human body stores an average of max. 5 milligram B12. Let's say the average weight of a human is 70 kg. This means that the ratio between his total weight and the weight of his B12 is is 1:14,000,000.

I have no idea if the same ratio applies to insects, but if it does, that average insect mentioned above contains (0,14 mcg:14,000,000) 0,00000001 mcg B12.

This means that if a human needs to consume 2.4 mcg insect derived B12 daily, he would need to eat 240 million insects, and I repeat - daily. Not very tempting or realistic, definitely boring and kind of way too time consuming - and not even vegan.

This isn't about eating insects, but insect droppings. I have to admit that I have no idea about how much an insect dropping weighs, and I'm not going to experiment to find the ratio between a human's weight and the weight of his droppings. So - pardon my blind guess here - I'll just take a random number, and say that the ratio is 1:100. This means that if the ratio in the insect droppings (the ratio between B12 and all that other stuff) is the same as the ratio between B12 and all the other stuff in his body, an insect will create insect droppings pr. day resulting in 0,00000001/100 = 0,0000000001 mcg B12.

So, for people who don't really fancy eating insects, and go for the random gourmet insect droppings on the surface of plants instead, they would have to eat 2400 billion insect droppings daily instead of only 24 billion insects. After all, it's important to have some spare time to spend with family and hobbies, so the 1:100 ratio would maybe make this a more tempting solution (for non-vegans). Unless, of course, they don't have any hobbies or need an excuse to get out of the house.

Finally, B12 isn't B12. It's either active, bioavailable B12 or inactive B12 analogues. If mosquito droppings have the same ratio between active, bioavailable B12 and B12 analogues as human droppings have, the ratio is 1:20, because 95% of the B12 in human excrements are not active, bioavailable B12, but passive B12 analogues. This means more bad news: the numbers above have to be multiplied by 20. That's either 48 000 billion (that's 48 trillion) insect droppings or a more realistic 480 billion insects - only to get the daily dosis of 2.4 mcg of active, bioavailable B12 pr. day.

Bon apetit.


(Disclaimer: the numbers above may be wrong).

:)

:D:D:D:D
Korn you need to get out more!

:D

Don't tell me this now when I was planning to check if these numbers were right or if I had missed out on something and added too many or too few zeroes!

Admirable work... but maybe you should get another hobby or something. And don't even tell us you were going to get an ultra-accurate mirco scale to start measuring the results to be become more precise with your calculations :D.

I just take EarthSource multi-vitamins. It has well over 1000% of DV of B12 (sorry for not being more accurate - 4167% for 3 pills = um... well, over 1000% or so for 1 pill. Good enough for me).

Oh, and even if there were 4800 billion insect droppings on my vegetables, I wash them as best as I can. I guess maybe only 29.3 billion of them would get missed or couldn't be washed off (my wild approximation may vary depending on how well you wash your vegetables). That would dilute your statistics.

Sorry if I sound like I'm giving you a hard time. I'm not. But your post made me chuckle. I'm just having fun...

Peace!

Isn't it the bacteria in the soil that actually produce the B12 that is found on plants fresh from the ground?

Quote:

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sleepydvdr

but maybe you should get another hobby or something.

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Korn obviously listened to you as he's now putting up pics of unusual animals. Much more interesting I think.

What about bird poop? Wonder if the plant absorbs stuff from bird poop - or if we eat bird poop residues from the plants?

I had a bird poop on my head a couple of months ago. The poop smelled really badly of amonia. Maybe the amonia would be enough to kill any other "nutrient" in the poop. :confused: