While your plant-based diet may be brimming with nutrients and other healthful compounds, all savvy vegans know that it’s important to supplement with vitamin B12.
Vitamin B12 is needed for cell division and the formation of healthy red blood cells. It’s also involved in the production of myelin which forms a protective sheath around nerve fibers. A B12 deficiency can produce anemia and it may also cause nerve damage. Low levels of vitamin B12—even when you don’t have any deficiency symptoms and feel just fine—have also been linked to an increased risk for heart disease.
While animal foods provide vitamin B12, plants don’t have any. But vegans aren’t the only ones who need to pay attention to B12. As people age, changes in digestion can result in a decreased ability to absorb the vitamin B12 from animal foods. The problem is that the vitamin B12 in meat, eggs and dairy foods is attached to a protein molecule. In many older people, changes in levels of stomach acid make it difficult to break the bond between the B12 and its protein carrier and the vitamin isn’t well absorbed. These changes don’t affect the B12 in supplements or fortified foods, though, since the B12 in these products isn’t bound to protein.
Because of this, the Institute of Medicine—the government organization that establishes all U.S. nutrient recommendations—says that everyone over the age of 50 should get at least half of their vitamin B12 from either supplements or fortified foods.
Vitamin B12 absorption varies depending on how much is in a dose. As the dosage goes up, the absorption rate drops. This means that the less often you consume B12, the more you need. For most people, a single daily supplement providing 25 to 100 micrograms of B12 is enough. If you supplement just a couple of times a week, you’ll need a pill that provides as much as 1,000 micrograms.
If you’re eating plenty of B12-fortified foods, though, you don’t need supplements. Aim for two to three servings per day of a food that provides at least 1.5 micrograms of vitamin B12. That’s the amount in 1 cup of Tempt Hemp milk.
On food labels, the vitamin B12 content is listed as “percent of the Daily Value” or DV. The DV for vitamin B12 is 6 micrograms, so a food providing 25% of the DV for vitamin B12 contains 1.5 micrograms. Here are the most commonly available vegan foods that are fortified with vitamin B12:
Veggie meat analogues: 1.0 to 3.0 micrograms per serving
Tempt Hemp Milk: 1.5 micrograms per cup
Fortified soymilk: 1.2 to 2.9 micrograms per cup
Nutritional yeast, Vegetarian Support Formula: 4 micrograms per tablespoon (check the label since some brands of nutritional yeast do not contain B12)