Essay About Nutrition

I used trustworthy nutrition publications that directed me to a well-known nutritionist who is also a frequent contributor to the New England Journal of Medicine to find the paper. The website I visited had the prefix “.org,” indicating that the content had undergone expert review. Thomas Clemens, a PhD-holding editor, is the author of the piece. Because of Clemens’ extensive understanding of nutrition and his experience teaching in many academic institutions, his academic position as a scholar lends the paper a lot of weight. The website has an editorial board composed of editorial writers and page editors that look at the trending nutritional content and issues and decide whether that will feature in the future. Clemens is a member of the editorial board who is also assigned the task of dictating the direction and the tone of the published articles. The position he occupies further make the work credible and wins the confidence of readers. Information about the editorial board can be fetched from the article’s website.

The article selected was a study on how vitamin B12 deficiency affects the bone health. The author utilizes a descriptive research design that mostly relied on case studies. Clemens employed a scientific approach to inform his studies in the collection of data, analysis, interpretation and presentation. Having been published in 2014, the article is only 3 years old. To support his ideas, the author uses scientific knowledge and relate it to cases studies conducted by Roman-Garcia on the effect of vitamin B12 on the development of bones. Clemens provided a reference for the readers to find more information regarding the topic.

The study aimed at proving that a deficiency of vitamin B12 had a negative impact on the development and maintenance of bones. The vitamin is an integral part of the formation of methionine and an enzyme called L-Methylmalonyl. Roman-Garcia among other scholars researched on the effect of the vitamin on the bone mass. The experiment was conducted using a mouse as a lab animal. The outcome revealed that people need to take food rich in vitamin B12 to strengthen their bones.

The paper addresses all people regardless of whether one has a bone problem or not. The hypothesis was, ’Vitamin B12 affects bone’s health’, a position that leads to the recommendation that there should be an increased intake of vitamin B12 especially for the elderly people. The conclusions and recommendations are well supported by the case study done by Roman-Garcia. A potential additional research can be carried out to test the hypothesis presented, through establishing the link of vitamin B12 and the associated cases of fractures and Osteoporosis especially for people suffering from pernicious anemia. A control group can have people who are not suffering from pernicious anemia.

I, however, did not believe that bone weakness is caused by the severe deficiency of the vitamin. People without this severity are also victims of weak bones. Therefore the author ought to have quantified the degree of deficiency instead of being general. More information on the topic can be retrieved from The journal of bones and mineral research and The New England Journal of Medicine.

Work Cited

Clemens, T. L. (2014). Vitamin B12 deficiency and bone health. New England Journal of Medicine, 371(10), 963-964.