by Reed Mangels, PhD, RD

One of the joys of working in vegan nutrition is the extraordinarily gifted colleagues I have had the opportunity to work with. Two of them, both vegan dietitians, Jack Norris, RD and Ginny Messina, MPH, RD, have websites and a blog whose contents I frequently refer to for current, thoughtful information about vegan nutrition.

Jack is the Executive Director of Vegan Outreach; VeganHealth.org (I am a contributor to this site) is a project of Vegan Outreach. VeganHealth.org’s mission is to provide “reviews of the scientific literature related to the health benefits of a vegan diet, discussions about concerns related to vegan nutrition, and recommendations for nutrients that can be low in the diets of some vegans.” As an example of the type of in-depth work that is a feature of VeganHealth.org, Jack recently provided an extensively researched article, “Folic Acid: Does It Make a Multivitamin Unsafe?” in which he explored the safety of folic acid, a vitamin found in many multivitamins. This article debunks the advice that some practitioners have given to avoid multivitamins that contain folic acid due to concerns about cancer. This does not appear to be a valid concern based on current evidence.

Ginny’s blog, The Vegan RD, has a wealth of content going back to 2007. Ginny’s posts are insightful and have practical tips as well as being based on the latest scientific information. A recent post, Vegan Diets and Colon Cancer: The Role of Calcium, is an example of the in-depth content that’s a feature of The Vegan RD blog. In this post, Ginny explores a recently published study that found a higher risk of colon cancer in vegans. As Ginny points out, the number of vegans was low, and these results should be interpreted with caution. Still, this study leads Ginny to “consider whether there might be something we can learn here to make vegan diets better.” I encourage you to read Ginny’s full post to see what she is suggesting.

I hope you’ll continue to read VRG’s blog (www.vrg.org/blog/) and also to take a look at VeganHealth.org and The Vegan RD blog.