Responses to Vitamin B12: Are You Getting It?

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by Jack Norris, RD

Below are responses to some comments we've received about vitamin B12 and the vegan diet:

All the vegans I know are healthy and they neither take vitamin B12 supplements nor eat foods fortified with vitamin B12.

I completely understand the desire to say that a vegan diet does not require any supplements or fortified foods. However, I simply see no other way to explain the findings of all the studies that I've described in the paper Vitamin B12: Are you getting it? [1MB pdf]

I'm glad that all of the vegans you know are healthy without supplementing with B12, but this is not everyone's experience, and I fear that it will not last forever. You might be interested in this letter Vegan Outreach recently received from a long-term vegan:

For the last few months, I was feeling sluggish, had to lie down a couple of times a day, found it difficult to work evenings and to exercise for long periods. Under [my vegan, medical doctor's] guidance, I was taking protein powder, creatine, testosterone, nystatin, etc., all to no avail. I was taking nutritional yeast every day, so I knew it wasn't B12 deficiency.

Then, one day, I came across your B12 article by sheer accident. I wasn't going to read the whole thing, but I glanced through it and was struck by your insistence that none of the usual sources are adequate. I still didn't believe it, but I had some old B12 pills in the fridge, so I popped one.

The effect was almost immediate and remarkable. I have been taking them almost every day, my stamina and energy level are up, and I feel middle-aged again instead of a tired old man.

This is not that uncommon among long-term vegans. See Vital Signs: Dementia Without a Cause for a description of another vegan who had a similar experience without such a positive outcome.

Cows, gorillas, and elephants are all vegetarians and they do not take B12 supplements either.

The human digestive system differs from that of an elephant or gorilla. Furthermore, elephants ingest soil and their young eat their mother's dung. Gorillas also ingest soil and feces, as well as insects and other invertebrates. This could explain how they get B12.

Human digestion differs even further from the digestive systems of ruminants. The bacteria in a cow's rumen (fore stomach) synthesize adequate amounts of B12 to meet the animal's requirements. Conversely, most humans in western cultures are not able to absorb the B12 produced by bacteria in their intestinal tracts.

I am disappointed that Vegan Outreach would choose to portray the vegan diet as unnatural by saying that vegans need to take supplements.

In my opinion, there is probably no one in the U.S. who eats a "natural" diet. The U.S. food supply is routinely fortified with vitamins B1, B2, B3, iron, folic acid, vitamin D, vitamin A, calcium, vitamin C, and iodine. Even raw foodists’ diets cannot be considered completely "natural" since our produce is cultivated strains and hybrids, not the original plants that once grew wild.

There are significant amounts of people in developing countries who, while not starving, are suffering from vitamin and/or mineral deficiencies because their soils do not have the necessary nutrients. In the early part of this century, goiter was a common problem in the U.S. in places where the soil did not contain much iodine. This continued until salt started being iodized and food started being transported throughout the country. There are places around the world where both animals and humans develop health problems from selenium deficiency, as the soil in those areas does not contain enough selenium. There are places where animals develop B12 deficiency because the soils do not contain enough cobalt. In the South, pellagra was a very serious problem because people relied on corn, a poor source of niacin, as a primary component of their diet.

So, all who argue against a vegan diet on grounds that supplementing with B12 is not natural will be hard-pressed to show how their own diets are any more natural than a vegan one.