Take a look on the side of your vitamin bottle. Does it contain thiamin (B1)?

A base building block used to make synthetic B1 is Grewe diamine, a coal tar derivative from coke production (not to be confused with the soft-drink). Coke is a grey, hard and porous coal-based fuel made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air. Grewe diamine can also be produced by using acrylonitrile (a toxic chemical used in the production of plastic and rubber). Chemicals like o-chloroaniline and dimethyl sulfate (highly carcinogenic compounds) can also be used.

Grewe diamine is reacted with chemicals like carbon disulfide (a known neurotoxin used to make perfume, cellophane, rayon, rubber and varnish). Several other chemicals are added to facilitate reactions that yield a substance that is said to be identical to B1 found in food.

I have done a little digging (although briefly) on the fermentation production of B2. Didn’t take me long to find some head scratching stuff. Turns out they feed vegetable oils (like palm oil) and genetically modified corn and soy to genetically modified bacteria and fungi such as Escherichia (E.) coli, Bacillus (B.) subtilis, Ashbya (A.) gossypii, and Candida (C.) famata. In 2018 they found recombinant DNA from Ashbya (A.) gossypii in one of the final products.

I think I’ll pass and stick to real food.

As always, do your own research before you make up your mind.

If you think the vitamins in your pills are coming from food. Think again.

“Isolation of thiamine from natural sources is only of historical interest. All of the thiamine produced worldwide is manufactured by chemical processes. Two major synthetic routes are used”.

The use of grewe diamine (a coal tar derivative) to make thiamine (B1) is “universally practiced by all large manufacturers”.

As a natural health clinician I am not happy to recommend synthetic vitamins derived from petrochemicals, coal tar and other toxic compounds to my clients.

I owe it to my clients to be honest with them and tell them exactly how these ‘vitamins’ are made, who makes them and what they are made from. That way they can make up their own mind if they want to take these ‘natural alternatives’. I’m sure most of my clients think this stuff is coming from food and the simple truth of the matter is it’s not.

I am of the perspective that;

1. No one actually knows what is in a food. Vitamins have never been shown to exist in foods in the manner we have been told. There is no proof demonstrating their existence in a food. The only place vitamins are found is in the bottom of a beaker in a lab after being synthesised from toxic chemicals.
2. Vitamins, minerals and other so called ‘phytochemicals’ exist no where in isolation in nature. Therefore the study of these compounds in isolation is pointless and provides no insight into how food interacts with the human body.
3. A plant or animal food is a whole substance. The whole food is more than the sum of its parts. This is synergy. No one knows how all of the components within a food interact with each other, nor how they behave when ingested by a living being.
4. Just about everything we have been told about nutrition is non-sense.
5. People can eat whatever they want, as long as the food is whole, fresh, local, seasonal, organic (not sprayed with poison), prepared with love by yourself or with someone you care about, and enjoyed mindfully.