Incogni

How does this follow in any way? You know that the distinction of “supplement” and “regular part of the diet” is completely arbitrary, right? What’s the difference between regular supplementation and the requirement of “having to hydrate” or “eat your greens for your vitamins” to be healthy? It’s even less logical/relevant considering many replacement products add B12 etc on their own by now.

Also factory farmed animals are getting B12 fed as a supplement, which makes this argument even weirder. “Pills bad/not part of the diet”, but feeding the same pills to pigs and then eating their meat to get the same nutrients is suddenly “ok and natural/good diet”? Doesn’t make sense to me.

No, since the claim “veganism does cause intellectual deficiencies” is still wrong, because veganism doesn’t cause this, a lack of supplementation does. And most vegans supplement adequately. So saying that veganism “per default” causes this would be dishonest, because it implies that not properly supplementing is the default/intrinsic to veganism, which is not the case.

It’s like saying “drinking alcohol kills you” just because you have to be mindful of limiting your consumption and it can kill you if you don’t. An extreme statement that contains a kernel of truth, but is simply not correct.

Your response isn’t any better, to be honest. Yes, there is a certain risk of a negative impact on cognitive performance related to a large and long-time B12 or iron deficiency. But there is a large difference between “you have to take supplements to be healthy” and a blanket claim of “veganism does cause intellectual deficiencies”, especially considering most vegans supplement.

Side note: the B12 in factory farmed meat is also supplemented to those animals, otherwise their meat wouldn’t contain it, being produced under those conditions. One can only hope all farmers actually do this

I live in a country where these measurements aren’t used, so without any background knowledge I interpreted the comma as “and” at first. Looking at the picture, I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be “or” instead, in which case they should have used a slash instead of a comma imo.