❓Do vegans absolutely need to supplement B12? How should I take it?
I've been vegan for two years and haven't supplemented at all. I recently looked into it and it seems pretty important — now I'm a little worried.
2 Answers
B12 is basically the one nutrient you really need to take seriously on a vegan diet. It's synthesized by bacteria — plants themselves don't contain it, and animals get it indirectly through gut bacteria or fortified feed, which is why it's essentially absent from whole plant foods (aside from a few fortified products). I'd recommend either regularly eating fortified nutritional yeast, fortified cereals, or fortified plant milk (check the amount on the nutrition label), or just taking a supplement directly — the common forms are methylcobalamin or cyanocobalamin, and you can either take a larger dose once or twice a week or a small dose daily. I really do think this one deserves attention — deficiency symptoms develop slowly, and if nerve damage becomes severe it may not fully reverse. Getting your blood B12 or homocysteine/MMA checked periodically gives a more accurate read on your status.
Adding to this — even though lacto-ovo vegetarians can get some B12 from eggs and dairy, by current research standards a lot of them still aren't actually getting enough, because the B12 content in eggs and milk isn't that high to begin with, and if you're not eating much of them, you can still end up deficient. I'd suggest lacto-ovo vegetarians also get into the habit of regular testing rather than assuming eating eggs and dairy automatically covers it — especially if you don't eat much of them day to day.