Nutrition check

Vegan for Life:
Everything You Need to Know
to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet

by Jack Norris and Ginnie Messina

Very detailed study of the vitamins, minerals, and essential elements needed for a human body and how a vegan diet could supply them.  Nothing I didn't know already, but nothing ridiculous, either.  I love the way they dismiss the notion that a vegan diet isn't natural because our far remote ancestors ate meat--

There's no doubt that hominids at meat. . .The argument for veganism has always been primarily ethical, and ought to remain that way.  It's based on a concern for the future, not an obsession about the past.

Actually, that's a quote of a quote.  They say,

The assumption that there is one natural prehistoric diet, which can be approximated today and would be optimal for modern humans, is dubious as best.  Today's commercial plant foods and meats are different from the foods available in prehistoric times.  We eat hybrids of plants and we feed foods to animals that they would not normally eat....

A little more discussion on vitamin B12 supplements, why they're needed and especially why they're needed for people over 50.  I guess I'll start taking them.  Good thing I went back and reread that chapter, while writing this review.  They recommend one of the following:

•  Two servings per day of fortified food providing 1.5 to 2.5 micrograms of B12
•  Take daily supplement of 25 micrograms (25 - 100)
•  Take a supplement of 1000 mcg three times a week.

On first reading, I thought it said all three of the above.

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Can I rant off topic for a second?  How come every time I research a supplement and come up with an appropriate dosage for me, the stores only carry pills with 100, 200 or even 1000 times that dosage?   I went to the store to replace my 1000 IU Vitamin D3 tables and the smallest they had was 2000.  This is a vitamin that's stored in the fatty tissues--whatever I take, it's going to be with me for a long time.

Admitted, I went back and checked--a 1600 IU daily dosage is the current recommendation for a person in my latitude, so the 2000 is reasonably appropriate.  When the bottle runs dry, I fully expect to go back to the store and find nothing smaller than 10,000.

Also on my list was Vitamin B12; I was looking for the 25-100 mcg mentioned about.  I found 500.  Would 500 mcg six times a week be equivalent to 1000 mcg, three times?  Or do I attempt to cut them into 1/10 ths?