Vitamin

"Should I give my baby a few supplemental drops of vitamin D?" my sister asked me about the vitamins missing from breast milk. "The American Academy of Pediatrics said so."

"Though it may seem right for you to follow their recommendation," I murmured, not that enthusiastic, "it's optional in my personal opinion." There's really no scientific basis why I came to such conclusion. I have to admit it.

The simplest explanation would be that we're often bombarded with dozens of parenting dogmas - most of them conflicting - and each claiming to work. So it goes. What works for one may not necessarily work in another hemisphere. Foods that work in one culture, for example, will not be adequate in another. Well, so is vitamin B12, in a way. Vitamin B12 deficiency or megaloblastic anaemia, as every medical student learns in the first haematology class, is a risk for vegans who consume no meat because vitamin B12 is only found in foods of animal origin. Oddly enough, it was found that orthodox Hindus who had been quite healthy on a vegan diet in their native India began to suffer from a high incidence of megaloblastic anaemia after migrating to England for quite a while, consuming the same diet. This condition can be serious with nervous damage, and hey, even neuropsychiatric abnormalities. If it is obvious there is no real vitamin B12 in plant sources, the really interesting question is why so many Hindus are not affected in the first place. Not until the mid-1970s was the cause traced to vitamin B12 deficiency, which in India was prevented by insect contamination of grains. The same foodstuffs purchased in England were uncontaminated and therefore contained no animal source of vitamin B12.

In fact, neither plants nor animals are able to manufacture B12, so all animals obtain their (and our) supply of this essential vitamin either directly or indirectly from bacteria, which are the only organisms capable of making it.