Vitamin B12 is one of the most important things that vegos, especially pure vegetarians (vegans) who don't eat any animal-derived products at all, need to know about.

Vitamin B12 is an absolutely vital nutrient.

The human body only needs and uses B12 in tiny quantities (1). This means that it takes quite a long time to become deficient in B12.(2)

However, a deficiency of this vitamin can cause extremely serious health problems and can have lasting consequences.(3)

Vitamin B12 is found in many animal-derived foods. For example, meat, liver, and to a lesser extent, fish, eggs, dairy produce and brewers' yeast all contain B12.(4)

B12 is produced by a micro-organism. This means that plant foods like cereals, fruit and vegetables, nuts, and legumes don't inherently contain B12.(5)

Herbivorous animals like cattle and sheep produce B12 within their own digestive system, and absorb it into their bodies.(6)

B12 is also found in dirt and insects. It seems likely that in our "original" state, human beings absorbed enough B12 by eating foods grown and harvested in natural environments like forests. However, human beings can't produce their own B12, and in the modern world much of our food is produced in a "hygienic" way involving sprays, washing and so on, which remove the B12 sources from our plant-based foods.(7)

What this means for vegetarians is that a pure vegetarian diet will probably not contain sufficient B12 for your body's needs.

Vegetarians who don't eat dairy products or eggs need to ensure that they get adequate vitamin B12 for their body's needs.

There are several possible sources of B12 for pure vegetarians. Various information circulates on this topic and it's really important not to believe everything you hear - it's vital to be well informed and to make sure you take care of your B12 requirements. The safest way to ensure this is to take a B12 supplement.

Some plant foods are considered as possible sources of B12. These include spirulina, sea vegetables, fermented products like miso and tempeh, and mushrooms. However, it has been shown that they either do not contain enough B12, or do not contain the right kind of B12 to meet the body's requirements.

Plant foods like these are NOT reliable sources of adequate B12. (8)

Many foods, especially foods designed for vegetarians or vegans, contain added B12. If relying on fortified foods for your B12 requirements, it's important to check the label to see how much B12 the product contains.(9) (If in doubt, take a supplement and/or ask your doctor for a B12 test.)

It's also important to check HOW the B12 is listed. Vitamin B12 must be listed on the Nutritional Information panel in order for the product to be a reliable source of B12. If the B12 is listed as an ingredient, but the vitamin's quantity is absent from the Nutritional Information panel, the recommended daily intake can't be verified so the product shouldn't be relied on as a source of B12. This may be because the product doesn't contain enough vitamin B12. In addition, the usefulness of the B12 content depends on the type of B12 in the food. B12 occurring naturally in foods is not necessarily effective for the human body.(10)

B12 fortified foods known to Vegetarian Action include:
(Note: this list is not exhaustive. Please let us know if you find any others!)

• Sanitarium WATERPLUS Flavoured Mineral Water
• Frucor MIZONE Sports Water
• Sanitarium MARMITE Original Yeast Spread (please note: Vegemite does not have B12 listed on its Nutrition Information Panel so may not be a reliable source of B12)
• Sanitarium SO GOOD soy milk: Regular, Lite, Fat Free, Vanilla, Chocolate, Soyacino, Essential
• Sanitarium SO HEALTHY Soy Sausages: Original, Country, BBQ
• Sanitarium SOY SLICES: Smoked, Garlic & Herb
• Sanitarium NOT CHICKEN Soy Fillets
• Sanitarium NOT BACON Soy Rashers
• Sanitarium SO GOOD fresh soy milk (refrigerated): Regular, Lite, Fat Free, Essential
• VITASOY fresh soy milk (refrigerated): Premium, Light, Lush, Calci-Plus

The safest way to ensure that your vitamin B12 intake is adequate, apart from ensuring you consume a sufficient quantity of B12 fortified foods (see previous section), is to take a vitamin B-12 supplement. It is possible to buy animal-free supplements. As with fortified foods, it's important to check the dosage to make sure you get enough (especially if you're taking it as part of a complex such as B Vitamins, where the quantity of B12 may not be adequate to meet your needs).

To see more information about required dosages, please click here.

Vitamin B12 is an essential dietary nutrient. Although required in very minute quantities by the human body, deficiency of this vitamin has very severe consequences for the body and nervous system.

Vitamin B12 is readily available in a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet through the consumption of eggs and dairy products. However, it is not readily available in vegan diets. (For more information on where vegans can get it, please see our article Vitamin B12: what every vego needs to know.)

Because Vitamin B12 is not naturally occurring in modern vegan diets, some people argue that this is proof that vegetarian diets are not "natural" - that we were "meant" to eat meat.

It's a complex issue but there are a number of ways to refute this.

B12 is a unique nutrient. It is produced micro-organisms are found in the soil and on the surface of plants. (However, it's destroyed by pesticides and washing.)

B12 is not produced by the bodies of animals. Herbivores eat raw and unwashed plant foods, such as grasses and fruits, and so ingest the micro-organisms. Carnivores eat herbivores, and receive the B12 "second hand" from them.

In some herbivores, the micro-organisms can get established in the gut of the animal and live there, producing B12 which then supplies some or all of the animal's B12 needs. Thus, some animals can live without a continous external supply, instead meeting their body's needs from "within".

B12 is not an argument against the "natural-ness" of vegan diets, because:

1. Humans, as plant eaters, would naturally ingest B12-producing micro-organisms by eating unwashed and naturally grown fruits and vegetables. However, in the sanitised modern world where vegetables are sprayed, washed, sterilised, transported, stored etc, the poor little mites are all gone by the time we eat it. Therefore the lack of B12 is not caused by the plant-based diet, but rather, by modern methods of prdoucing food.
   
   
2. Scientists have found that some herbivores don't need a continuous supply of B12 through their food. Instead, the B12 micro-organisms can become established as live colonies in their guts, where they produce B12 which the animal is able to assimilate to meet its needs.
   
   It has not been categorically established, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis, that human beings originally also had this capacity. However, through thousands of years of meat-eating, our capacity to meet our B12 needs in this way has atrophied, leaving us with the need for a continuous external supply.
   
   (The idea is that when meat putrefies in the long human intestines - we have long ones like herbivores, not short ones like carnivores - the acidic environment which results is fatal for the micro-organisms. Continuous meat eating over time therefore has prevented the micro-organisms from being able to get established in the human body. It's also hypothesised that due to the long absence of the micro-organisms from our guts, the human body's ability to assimilate B12 from micro-organisms living in its own guts may have changed.)
   
   
3. Some vegans claim to have lived healthily on an exclusively vegan diet for many years without developing B12 deficiency. If this is true, it would appear to suggest that some people may have the capacity to host B12-producing micro-organisms. Accepting the atrophy hypothesis (see point 2), it could further be hypothesised that with long enough adherence to an exclusively plant-based diet, the atrophy may be reversed and our species could begin again to produce B12 to meet our own needs without a continuous external supply.

Further reading:

B12 and the Vegan Diet All You Need To Know About Vitamin B12 in Vegetarian and Vegan Diets, by Dr Justine Butler - from the Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation

B12: An essential part of a healthy plant-based diet, by Stephen Walsh, PhD

Vitamin B12 Deficiency—the Meat-eaters’ Last Stand, by Dr John McDougall

References for this page

Page updated: April 2008

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