Don't make the mistake of assuming that vegans are the group with the most widespread lack of nutrition knowledge. While there is potential for failure with plant based diets, so it is for every dietary pattern. Hence charts like
these are born - namely, close to half of the causes of death in the States are "diseases of affluence" with dietary factors (animal products and junk food, more often than not both of them in one package) being the primary risk factors. And I assure you vegans represent less than a percent on this chart
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. Plant based eating with full control over all essential nutrients is a relative no brainer, one need only stick to whole foods (which, as you say, we all fail at regardless of eating patterns, due to craptastic lifestyles and stupidity. Some more than others (which is where the fairy tales of the dangers of plant based diets are born - idiots trying to feed a newborn exclusively apple juice :mrgreen
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- the media just gobbles that kind of sensationalist crap right up). No otherwise special effort required. Main sources of folate are leafy greens.
As for b12 - it is a bacterial byproduct, whether it is synthesized by bacteria in animal colons (all animals, including humans share this ability) and then the producing animals are ingested by other animals, whether obtained through fecal contamination (where most b12 resides), or whether produced by bacteria in a lab, nothing changes, it remains a bacterial byproduct, and the pill happens to be safest route of obtaining it. As a side note; both me and my old man had practically zero b12 stores (<148 pmol/L) when we got tested. Both meat eaters at the time (he persists, much to his demise (triple stroke recovery)). Much like what happened with iodine in salt, don't be too surprised if you see conventional, "non-vegan" food supplemented with b12 off the bat in the near future, considering
39% of people (nonvegans) are low on it.