Vivez Nature

I met another Aurelia at a veg event recently. She's a fellow vegan parisian who loves animals and cycling. (How many of us are there?!) Aurelia's day job is at an farmed animal-rights group, and on evenings and weekends, she sits on the board of the French vegetarian society, serving as their media liaison, among other things.

Last week we met at a little bar in Montmartre to talk shop, and Aurelia told me about an upcoming event in Paris called Vivez Nature. It's billed as a "Salon d'Agriculture Biologique" (organic agriculture expo) and sounded a lot like a smaller version of Expo West, a giant trade show I used to attend when I worked at VegNews. So, this past Sunday--a gloriously warm and sunny Indian summer day--I pedaled over to La Villette see how the French do this sort of thing.

It started off with an exciting bang: The first booth I laid eyes on was Sea Shepherd's. Cool! Next was an organization dedicated to educating the world about the environmental hazards of palm oil cultivation. I had a great conversation with a woman at that booth and came away thinking "I'll never eat Earth Balance again--for the gibbons!" It's depressing to think about how deforestation for selective crop growing effects primates and other animal (and plant) species throughout Borneo and the rest of Indonesia. Heartbreaking, but worth investigating.

After this somewhat interesting start, things slowed down to a boring crawl. The animal rights booths gave way to a bland series of essential oil vendors, soap stalls, and book booths selling hundreds of titles on various esoteric subjects, all seemingly written by the same author (?), among them "Urinotherapie." (I don't really even want to know what that is.)

Things became mildly interesting again when we got to the food aisle; here we found superfood chocolate, vegan cookies, natural wines, and organic breads made from non-GMO grains. Like every other event I've been to where free samples were being handed out, the masses descended upon the poor folks doing the distributing like famished zombies, spawning copy-cat behavior in everyone within grabbing distance.

I finally caught up with Aurelia at the Association Vegetarienne de France booth. She was mobbed, too. A wonderful sight to see is a mass of French people crowded around a booth offering information on veganism, animal rights, and environmental issues.

This isn't an event I'd pay to attend, but I'm glad I went, if only to have tasted this delicious palm oil-free, eggless noisette flour cookie made with vegan chocolate chips. Miam!

The Great B12 Debate

Author, speaker, and nutrition expert Vesanto Melina,
looking fabulous at 70!

The Association Vegetarienne de France recently hosted a lecture by respected vegan-health expert and author Vesanto Melina. Vesanto has written and co-authored many books on the subject of eating healthfully on a plant-based diet, including the titles Becoming Vegan and Becoming Vegetarian.

The one-hour presentation--centered on vegan-nutrition fundamentals--was given in English, with two french translators hard at work for the mostly francophone audience. I would guess that there were more than 100 people in attendance. Pretty good for a Wednesday night in Paris!

The B12-curious audience.

Vesanto used her warm and engaging personality to dispel myths and educate us on key issues relating to vegan diets, then turned the mic over to the audience, who had plenty of questions. All. About. B. 12.

B12!

One of the information tables at the Paris event.

There are, apparently, a lot of unanswered questions about B12. Can we get it from nutritional yeast? What about sea vegetables?  I've heard mushrooms have B12. How about spirulina?

NO!

Well, micro-amounts at best, but not enough to meet our bodies' B12 needs. If you're vegan, it's time to face facts, she said, more or less. You need to take a B12 supplement.

Vesanto and her translation team on stage.

In the past, I've taken B12 supplements--sublingual drops and tablets, and regular ol' vitamin-style pellets--but found that whenever I'd take them, I'd get insta-acne. Weird. Vanity triumphed over any health concerns I had, so I stopped taking it and simply increased the already-bountiful quantities of Marmite and nutritional yeast I was eating.

B12 deficiency at its most extreme results in severe damage to the nervous system. Symptoms include numb fingers and toes (I have this a lot, but chalked it up to "poor circulation"), depression, and memory loss. Ouch!

Are you vegan? Do you take a B12 supplement? What's the experience been like for you, before and after starting to supplement?

After introducing myself to Vesanto, she told me she was using
my latest article in VegNews Magazine to help her navigate
the vegan scene in the City of Light. What an honor!