Best Plant Sources For Vitamin B-12

Vitamin B-12 is a crucial nutrient for your body, offering numerous health benefits.

Signs of vitamin B-12 deficiency, such as fatigue, mood swings, mental sluggishness, and irritability, are unfortunately quite common.

B-12 plays a vital role in many bodily functions, including energy production, memory, and maintaining healthy skin and hair. Ensuring adequate intake of this vitamin is essential, which can be more challenging for those on a plant-based diet, but it is certainly achievable.

Here’s a comprehensive look at the various functions of vitamin B-12 in your body, symptoms of deficiency, and tips on how to ensure you’re getting enough of it.

Vitamin B-12, is a water-soluble vitamin that belongs to the B vitamin group and is considered the most important among them.

Your body cannot produce this essential vitamin, making regular intake crucial.

B-12 is vital for keeping nerve cells and blood cells healthy and plays a key role in DNA synthesis, which is the genetic material in every cell.

Simply put, vitamin B-12 supports your body at the most fundamental level. Without it, your nervous system can’t function properly, DNA synthesis may be impaired, and cell division is hindered.

B-12 is also crucial for the production and health of red blood cells. These cells carry oxygen to every other cell in your body and transport carbon dioxide back to your lungs for exhalation.

Given its essential role in maintaining cell health, vitamin B-12 is involved in many critical processes, as you’ll soon discover.

Most At-Risk Groups for Vitamin B-12 Deficiency

Anyone can be deficient or borderline for B-12, but certain groups are more at-risk for this happening.

Older adults tend to absorb B-12 less effectively because of lower amounts of stomach acid. This puts them at higher risk of a deficiency, especially if a digestive disorder is also in the equation.

In fact, anyone who has a digestive disorder is more at risk for a deficiency because nutrient absorption is typically impaired with these types of disorders.

Those who follow a plant-based diet may also be more prone to have low B-12 levels. This is because most sources of B-12 come from meat or animal products.

Daily Recommendation + Top B-12 Food Sources

For adults 14+, the U.S. government’s recommended daily intake (RDI) is 2.4 mcg. The RDI goes up to 2.6 mcg during pregnancy and 2.8 mcg while breastfeeding.

However, keep in mind many consider the government’s RDI the bare minimum.

Vitamin B12 is a water-soluble vitamin, meaning, in short, it is safe to consume at higher levels, as your body absorbs only as much as it needs and eliminates the rest through your urine.

And you may want to consider ensuring you consume higher levels — such as 25 mcg daily — to make certain your body is getting the amount of vitamin B12 it needs.

If You Do Eat Meat (Or Animal Products)…

Those who eat a lot of animal-based foods may be less likely to have a problem getting enough B-12 because it’s found abundantly in these foods.

Eggs, meat, dairy products, and fish are all top sources.

Plant-Based Sources of Vitamin B-12

While going more or entirely plant-based in your diet is outstanding for warding off serious diseases and your longevity in general, getting enough vitamin B12 is one of the biggest challenges.

Now, two of the best plant-based sources of vitamin B-12 are sea vegetables (also called edible seaweed), while certain types of mushrooms have “decent” levels of it.

Purple laver (often called nori) and green laver are both edible algae/seaweeds with substantial amounts of B-12. One study recommends eating around 4 grams (dried) of either one to meet the RDI for B-12.

Shiitake mushrooms are the best fungi to get vitamin B-12 from. Other mushrooms contain  B-12, but it’s usually present in an inactive form that the human body can’t use.

However, even when it comes to shiitake mushrooms, to get your entire RDI of B-12 from shiitake, you’d have to eat around 50 grams a day, which is quite a stretch.

Apart from sea vegetables and mushrooms, other plant-based sources of vitamin B-12 come from fortified foods. This means B-12 is added in instead of being naturally present.

Unfortunately, though, fortified foods are often heavily processed foods, meaning they’re high in other ingredients that can work against your health.

The most popular fortified foods for a plant-based diet are cereals, certain plant milks, and nutritional yeast.

Some fermented foods like tempeh, miso, and sauerkraut may also contain B-12 because it can be manufactured by certain bacteria, but the amount present varies widely.

What You Must LOOK for & AVOID in Your Vitamin B Supplement

Even many people who are not plant-based eaters can be low in vitamin B12 today and should consider a high-quality, organic supplement.

(As always, it is recommended you talk to your health care provider first before taking any type of vitamin or herbal supplement at all, especially if you have a health condition or are on medication.)

However, if you are more plant-based to fully vegetarian or vegan in your diet, it can be very challenging to get proper vitamin B12 levels from plant sources.

To ensure you are getting your vitamin B-12, a high-quality and independently verified organic supplement that provides you a balance of all eight essential vitamin Bs via whole food sources may be the most important supplement you can take.

These are the 4 KEYS to look for and avoid in a supplement:

1) Taking a complete vitamin B complex that provides you all eight essential Bs — versus a supplement that only provides you vitamin B12 in isolation — is highly recommended, as vitamins work synergistically together to support your energy, brain, metabolism, and more.

2) Most vital of all, it’s important you know that supplements in general may be the #1 worst “contamination” offender out there when it comes to feeding your body synthetic and potentially toxic ingredients that can (ironically) work against your health. This certainly includes many vitamin B supplements.

Just some of the common ingredients to avoid (many from true contamination of the products, some even intentionally added) include artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, artificial preservatives, pesticides / herbicides, excess heavy metals, hydrogenated oils, and magnesium silicate / talc.

That’s why it is truly mission-critical to choose a vitamin B complex supplement that is USDA Certified Organic.

USDA Certified Organic means the entire formula (not just a few specific ingredients) has been independently verified as non-GMO and free of these synthetic and potentially toxic ingredients — and even the plant-based ingredients that are used in the formula must be grown organically, meaning free of pesticides, herbicides, and more!

3) Next, there is a lot of misinformation and myth out there regarding the two forms of vitamin B12 in supplements, cyanocobalamin and methylcobalamin.

First, when cyanocobalamin enters the body, it is converted to either methylcobalamin or adenosylcobalamin, the two active forms of B12 in people, and the body extracts what it doesn’t need. (Research also suggests your body may be able to better absorb cyanocobalamin versus methylcobalamin.)

Second, while many cyanocobalamins in supplements are synthetic, there are now Certified Organic sources of natural-sourced cyanocobalamin that higher-quality supplements use. And the highest quality supplements ferment that Certified Organic and natural-sourced cyanocobalamin with probiotics, which can make it even more bioavailable to your body.

The bottom line here is that fermented, natural-sourced cyanocobalamin might be slightly better, but methylcobalamin is also a good source.

4) Finally, your supplement should also provide you ample amounts of the vitamin B12.

As noted above, B12 is a water-soluble vitamin, so your body uses what it needs and discards the rest through your urine.

Therefore, you may want to make sure you consume higher levels — such as 25 mcg daily / around 1000% of the Daily Value  — to ensure your body is getting the amount of vitamin B12 it needs.

(Again, as noted above, some supplements out there contain extremely high amounts of vitamin B12, such as over 2000 mcg daily — definitely do consider consulting with your healthcare provider before taking supplements with that level).