Everything You Need to Know About Vitamin B12
Discover what vitamin B12 is and what benefits it brings to your body:
I’m sure you’ve heard of vitamin B12 and its importance to our health, especially as a supplement to vegetarian diets. It is an essential vitamin for the good functioning of the body, so its absence can have serious health consequences.
What is vitamin B12 :
Vitamin B12 is also known as cobalamin or cyanocoobalamin. It is an essential nutrient for our body, whose main function is to help maintain the health of neurons and red blood cells. In addition, it is involved in making DNA from cells.
By transforming the body’s fatty acids, it intervenes in the production of blood, helps in the manufacture of myelin, an essential element and is also essential to produce energy in our body.
Vitamin B12 is considered only naturally present in foods of animal origin and therefore it is recommended that people who follow a vegetarian or vegan diet take vitamin B12 supplements. However, this does not mean that other people who do not follow this type of diet cannot have a vitamin B12 deficiency and should also take supplements.
Foods rich in vitamin B12:
Vitamin B12 is naturally present in various foods of animal origin. Crustaceans and mollusks, such as clams, mussels, oysters, crabs, or octopus, have a high amount of vitamin B12.
Also some fish, especially blue fish, are a great source of vitamin B12, such as sardines, tuna, cod or salmon.
As for meat, some of the foods that are richer in vitamin B12 are pig liver and beef liver, beef and veal and beef tenderloin.
It is also present in other foods of animal origin, such as eggs and dairy products, such as milk, yogurt and cheese.
On the other hand, we can find vitamin B12 in some foods of vegetable origin, although none of them have sufficient quantities, since they contain it in very low doses and have only traces of it. Therefore, they cannot be considered a valid source of vitamin B12, because they cannot cover the recommended daily amount.
Some of these vegetable foods are tempeh, which is produced from fermented soybeans, soybeans, broccoli, some mushrooms, such as shiitake mushroom, seaweed such as Nori, kombu seaweed or Akame.
In addition to foods that naturally contain vitamin B12, other products enriched with it can also be found. Eating this type of enriched foods is a good option to reach recommended amounts of vitamin B12.
Some foods enriched with vitamin B12 include breakfast cereals or soybeans and other vegetable beverages, enriched brewer’s yeast and enriched tofu, as well as other vegetable meats.
Taking vitamin B12 supplements :
The surest way to know that we are taking the recommended daily amounts of vitamin B12 is supplementation, so vitamin B12 supplements for vegetarians are the most recommended.
Many people think that supplements contain vitamin B12 of animal origin, however, they all contain vitamin B12 that has been synthesized in the laboratory.
There are different types of supplements, depending on the preferences of each person. You can opt for a daily supplement, that is, you would need to take one vitamin a day that contains between 25 and 100 micrograms of vitamin B12.
There are also supplements of 1000 micrograms of cobalamin, so in this case, the vitamin should be taken twice a week.
Another alternative, for which most people opt for their comfort, are supplements containing 2000 micrograms of cobalamin, which should be taken only once a week.
The weekly supplement is the one with the best absorption, which is why most vegetarians choose this option. In addition, it is the most convenient way to get the recommended levels of vitamin B12, as it is enough to take it once or twice a week and it is not necessary to be vigilant every day whether or not we have taken the necessary amount.
On the other hand, different formats of vitamin B12 supplements, gels or injections, sublingual pills, drops or sprays can be found on the market. The oral route is the format preferred by most vegetarians.
