B12 Visual Aid
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One of the many nutrients ALL people need is vitamin B12. All healthy diets require some planning regardless of whether they contain animal products or not. In fact, many nonvegans are deficient in vitamin B12. But for vegans, this vitamin is often a hot-button area that stirs up plenty of discussion and even some debate.
This vitamin is created by a bacteria and is entirely vegan. But since the bacteria lives inside many mammals’ intestines (including human intestines) and since this bacterial isn’t found in unfermented plant foods, the most common way to obtain B12 is through eating animal products. Because of this, people who eat a vegan diet and people who eat very few animal products may not get enough B12 unless they take a vitamin supplement or unless they eat fortified foods.
Luckily, you don’t have to choose. You can do both if you want since there doesn’t appear to be any risk of overdose from B12. Take a vitamin and/or eat fortified foods… it’s up to you!
Vegan Health suggests:
vegans should do one of the following:
- Eat fortified foods two or three times a day to get at least three micrograms (mcg or µg) of B12 a day or
- Take one B12 supplement daily providing at least 10 micrograms or
- Take a weekly B12 supplement providing at least 2000 micrograms.
Nonvegans and newbie vegans often ask me where I get my B12. I usually tell them my preference is to eat fortified foods. But when I say “fortified foods” many people look at me bewilderingly. They’re not exactly sure what that means.
So… let me show you:
Shown above: soy milks and almond milk, breakfast cereal and energy bars, and vegan chocolate pudding.
The image above is just a small sampling of the kinds of foods that are fortified with B12. There are a variety of cereals, non-dairy milks, and other products that contain B12.
To the vegans reading, where do you get your B12?
Soy milk and Luna bars
My wife turned me on to Luna bars when she was pregnant. Now I eat them every day.
B12 is easy to obtain.
Supplement that I take most days of the week with my vegan multi just for insurance, fortified almond milk/soy milk and fortified nutritional yeast
Great post! And you know the thing that most people don’t get? It’s that dairy and other animal-based foods are “fortified” too! With all the processing and pasteurization the “natural” B12 gets destroyed… So they pump in the replacements anyway.
To the vegans reading, where do you get your B12? – Both ways – supplements and the food!
very informative and well written article. I just have one point I’d like to make, Silk brand non dairy milks are owned by Dean foods, one of the largest dairy producers and cow harmers in the USA (and they aren’t much nicer to their human employees) so if you’re an ethical vegan if you buy Silk brand you are in effect funding factory dairy farming and cruelty to mothers and babies! Please boycott Silk! there are many good vegan companies to purchase from instead, a couple I like are Dream and Pacific Foods.
Dean Foods is not a dairy.
Dean Foods owns a bunch of other companies, some are dairies and some produce things like soymilk or tofu. Boycotting Silk because the parent company owns other nonvegan companies is like boycotting the grocery store. It’s like boycotting any company that sells both vegan and nonvegan products (a restaurant that offers vegan options, for example). Imagine what happens when those kinds of businesses find that there’s no market for their vegan products? Do you think that will prevent them from continuing to produce their nonvegan products???
Do what you will but the economic reality is that this kind of boycott will not result in any benefit to animals nor to humans.
fortified soymilk, ricemilk and other nutmilks works for me. i like the luna bars too, but i doh have a question mark about the added refined sugar.
at any rate cliff bars have come along way.
I don’t think you explained what fortified means for those who looked at you bewilderingly–and you didn’t mention any of the unfortified ways of getting b12 and other bacteria, such as fermented foods: miso and fermented cabbage, for example. I like this app, but many articles here are not thorough with their information, don’t provide citations, links to reliable resources, etc. I do appreciate the discussion and the authors’ dedication (all the writers here) and I appreciate what you’re doing. I think its good for a phone app, but not worth more than that.
you can just say you are vegan and get weird looks, from almost anybody, and not just from total strangers, even from those that know you, as far as that goes. people do get stuck in their undelicious “no shades of gray” world of happy happy, freedom of choice and the disinclined consumerist-think comfort zone, where ones thinking is done for them… if not by the mass media outlets then by the local Talking Heads. where irresonsible behaviour and obscene macho-man shenanigans is strongly encouraged. by default. it doesn’t surprise me that too many people can only erroneously spout off about the protein myth, where this concerns vegetariansim, and little else. granted, that human and non-human animal nutrition is a complicated subject, but that is not the point.
Nutritional yeast is a great way to get B12 naturally, but I also drink fortified soy milk and eat fortified cereal.
Almond Dream is available in yogurt now. It is very good.
http://m.prnewswire.com/news-releases/almond-dream-brand-extends-line-to-include-almond-non-dairy-yogurt-139357398.html
These nondairy producers may manufacture the products on machinery that has touched dairy equipment earlier, but no dairy product will be in the nondairy. The cleanup and switchover for dairy/nondairy equipment is quite extensive. Even almond/soy to some other base needs cleanup for allergen reasons.
I’m personally happy with sublingual methycobalamin supplements and don’t really pay attention to B12 quantities in fortified sources.
I add nutitional yeast to most of my recipes.
Nutritional yeast has not been proven to provide adequate B12 unless it’s been fortified. You can read more about that here: http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/vitaminb12
I get mine from a supplement once every two weeks (a very high 500ug dose). B12 doesn’t get removed from the body like other B vitamins so you don’t need to take it every day (in fact, B12 can still be found in small quantities in the human body up to five years after last consuming it). B12 deficiency though is a VERY serious thing so please make sure you get at least a small dose once in a while. I take a big dose as my diet is mostly fruit and nuts and I hardly ever have fortified foods.
I used to believe that spirulina and yeast powder can provide me enough B12. Vegetarian Marmite (I think it’s vegan too) specially highlights B12 on its sticker. However, some sources disputed its reliability. My current reliable sources of B12 probably comes from cereals and fortified soy milk formula
Dean Foods does produce dairy. They don’t just sell other company’s products like supermarkets do. Look up Dean Foods.
For anyone confused about what Dean Foods is, here is the wikipedia article that explains how the company sells both dairy and soy products: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Foods You can educate yourself and decide whether or not you want to buy the vegan products they sell.
Here’s another link :
http://www.deanfoods.com/media/54375/df_factsheet_8_11.pdf