Take A Supplement for Vegan Vitamin B12

You may have heard from a "concerned" meat-eater that you are at risk for a vitamin B12 deficiency if you choose not to eat meat and dairy products, and you may be wondering if that's true.

Well, yes and no...

If you live in a developed country and consume a variety of foods, you are unlikely to become deficient in vitamin B12. However, if you live in an undeveloped nation and don't have access to reliable sources of food, you run a greater risk of developing a deficiency.

Let's start with some background information on the vitamin itself...

Animal products provide the best sources of vitamin B12 because it comes from bacteria in dirt. When animals eat foods contaminated with this bacteria, it grows and flourishes in their stomachs, spreading through their blood around their bodies. It sounds gross, but it's an important bacteria to have in our bodies.

When humans eat animals who have B12 in their guts, they get adequate amounts of the vitamin. However, people who don't eat animals aren't actively ingesting vitamin B12.

Is the idea of eating dirt running through your head?

The funny part is that a few hundred years ago, vitamin B12 deficiency was likely not common because our ancestors didn't disinfecting with the same vigor that we do now. Rather, they pulled veggies out of the ground and ate them raw and dirty. With those dirtier vegetables, they ate a good amount of vitamin B12 and never worried about taking a vitamin supplement.

Unless vegans are willing to eat dirty vegetables, they should think about adding a vitamin B12 supplement to their diets. There are also a few non-animal sources in nature.

The good news for vegans is that there are several ways to get vitamin B12 without having to eat animal products. There are many vitamin supplements on the market, but make sure your vitamin doesn't contain any animal ingredients. It's common to use animal products as binders in vitamins.

Also, many vegan foods are now fortified with vegan vitamin B12; including nutritional yeast, soy milks, and breakfast cereals. Vitamin B12 is stored in the stomach, so the human body does have a stockpile of it that lasts for a few years. That means that people actually have a few years of living as a vegan before they even run out of the B12 already stored in their bodies.

So how rare is the deficiency?

That's hard to say as well. Vitamin B12 deficiency is hard to diagnose because its symptoms can often be confused with other problems, like anemia. The most common symptoms are fatigue, weakness, lightheadedness, pale skin, sleep disturbances, and overall malaise.

Because the deficiency is difficult to recognize, it's hard to know the exact incidence of vitamin B12 deficiency. Some reports say that as much as 39% of the population has low levels of vitamin B12, and many other reports say the levels are much lower.

The moral of the story is that a health vegan should take a vegan vitamin B12 supplement every few days, just to make sure they are covering their bases.

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