B12 in Traditional Plant Foods is Higher Than You Think 

DO NOT USE THIS INFORMATION TO STOP SUPPLEMENTING! I was hesitant to share this information because it could lead some on-the-fence supplementers to stop supplementing in favor of more risky foods. DON'T PLZ!! Also, one small mistake I made was conflating date palm sap with date syrup. Palm sap is used to make palm wine which is a B12 good contender since palm wine was traditionally consumed very widely across Africa as well as Asia and the Pacific Islands. Due to it's ubiquity I would consider this food worth investigating by taking more samples and doing a Methylmalonic Acid human study. Basic info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_wine

I am Polish and it makes me happy every time you cite a Polish study. Somehow, I never thought that so many significant studies could come out from here on nutrition :o

If B12 is synthesised by bacteria, it makes sense fermented food/drinks and algae (salty bacteria friendly environment) have it. Sterilised/pasteurised sauerkraut doesn't have the chance to have the same bacteria factory. Mushrooms likely get B12 in a similar way to cows: they feed on remains of plants/dirt 😜

this video couldn't've come at a better time. I was creating a b12 in foods database - and already used the previous video to help out - so I'm really glad we got a whole video on it. I learned so much. I'm adding this video to the database list - which is on my personal website on the 'articles' page.

When my paternal grandmother (born about 1895) became an elderly widow, my uncle who owned a pharmacy several towns away, used to come to the family's farm to sit with her over the weekend. Something happened concerning his business and he was not able to come for about a month. He called but my grandmother seemed ok over the phone. Neighbors, however, became concerned on the road because they usually saw her come out to get the mail and the daily paper or just sit on her porch. One of them called my uncle who came immediately after he was told that. My grandmother was inside her home having eaten everything she had canned in canning jars, all the peanut butter in the house, and ate all the pickles and the drank all the pickle juice. She was fine health wise, but she was suffering from dementia. She spent the next ten years living with my aunt. What is said in this video about canning and pickle juice helps me understand how my grandmother could be ok after a month of eating only those kinds of foods. We lived in Pennsylvania and my grandmother was in Georgia. So when we found out what happened, we were horrified. But everything worked out ok in the end.

In Romania there's a fermented liquid called borș (not to be confused with the Ukrainian borscht, it's different though the etymology is similar), which is normally used to make sour soup (ciorbă) but it's also consumed as a drink. It consists of water, wheat bran or barley bran, hominy and huște (the resulting mix of ingredients from previous fermentation), also thyme and lovage. The resulting liquid after fermentation is packed with a lot of vitamins and is traditionally very popular as a natural remedy in cases of fatigue, loss of appetite and weakness, or is simply added in various Romanian dishes as an ingredient. More recently it began to be commercialised as a health food and one brand claims it contains 29,15 μg of B12 per 500 ml (more than eleven times the recommended dose). I believe this should be researched more, but it is kind of common knowledge among Romanians that borș is a good remedy for anemia. Additional nutritional information that this band claims: per 500ml - Vitamin D 10,5μg (210%), Magnesium 146,5mg (39%), B6 0,31mg (22%), B3 3,165mg (20%), also B5 and calcium in signifiant amounts.

I actually eat sea buckthorn a lot, did not know it had B12. My absolute favorite berry.

My personal hypothesis is that a few hundred years ago we had a much more diverse gut micro biome and consumed MUCH more fiber, and I’m guessing we actually had species living in our guts that provided us with invivo B12 and at some point we lost those microbes.

I love the work you do Mic!! Take it easy and stay safe ❤

I’ve been learning Korean cooking and fermenting. From what I understand traditional methods sometimes use pottery called onggi. The onggi is porous inside and a glazed outside. The idea I’m getting is that possibly a culture remains retained in the porous material of the fermenting jar itself. I’ve been wondering if the jars were instrumental as well as the plant products fermented in them.

Even though I'm part polish - I barely remember if at all pickled parsley juice. I guess I'd got to go back to the polish cookbooks I have - which I knew were invaluable. When I ask why I read these cookbooks - well now we know why! I would love to open up a vegan polish restaurant and serve it - I bet a vegan polish restaurant would be delightful! It would be crazy is pickled parsley juice becomes a new trend due to this video - I'd love to see it in stores. I like picked food.

B12 control protocol... 1. Sobriety 2. Citrus, salts/iodine, some bacteria/soil...coastal grasses/aquatics & meadow mushrooms. 3. Sun/Sleep, Sprints... That pretty much, covers it...

mic, you were so instrumental to me going vegan. i was in it for health at first and your videos and study presentations really swayed me. i’m in in for the animals now that the “meat goggles” came off. but all in all, thank you so much for what you do! vegan is the way!

All people care about protein and B12 but people forget about fiber 😢

Only person I've ever known in real life to have a B12 deficiency was a nonvegan who ate loads of animal flesh.

the polish are extremely ahead in terms of plant-based agriculture. They developed drip irrigation systems for israel. I'm not surprised about their advances in fermentation. I'm half polish - so I know the importance of plant-based food for that side of my family. It was my grandparents on that side that got me in a vegan direction - they had the best tomatoes - people would come from other states to pick. Their lettuce rows were impeccable - they knew so much about farming! I learned a lot to go towards vertical farming from the principles they outlined!

Listen, all i know is when i went vegan 6 years ago my fingernails starting turning clear and lost that “opaque white” color slowly over a period of months, i was diagnosed with gum disease etc etc.. so now im on a fowl only diet, just chicken and turkey with the majority being plant based.. since then my fingernails have become normal, my gums stopped bleeding and im not falling asleep midway through the day.. (and yes i supplemented when i was vegan.. ESPECIALLY B12 amongst others)

This makes sense at last. I always wondered why plants' wouldn't contain B12, if the soil did...

Very interesting, thanks. And good that you stressed the point of not abandoning supplements or measured-fortified foods, at least at this point. Now I almost never eat out, but when I did my favourite cuisine was Udupi/Udipi, a famous cuisine of southern India the most well known foods of which are idli (steamed dumpling of rice and split skinless black bean, urad dal, ground and the batter fermented) and dosa, a pancake of a similar batter (also the thicker pancake, uttappam/oothappam, same batter). Idli and dosa (particularly masala dosa, rolled around a potato filling) are hugely popular across the country, and there are variations from other southern states like pessarattu using green moong/mung instead of urad. Would be great to know of B12 in these. Dr. Wiliam Li said in a video that even if fermented foods are cooked the broken bits of bacteria are beneficial: or so I understood, analogous to the dangers of endotoxins, harmful products of bacteria in meat which were destroyed by cooking yet (their toxin) remaining dangerous. In my own traditional Indian cuisine, Sindhi, we have carrots pickled in vinegar with tiny bits of garlic. I can't stand it, or the smell of people eating it 😀 but it was popular with older generations. Cauliflower and turnips can be somewhat similarly pickled, I think adding jaggery and black onion seeds: not so bad though I'm not into pickles. In Punjab dark purplish carrots, Lahori gajjar, can be similarly pickled like our Sindhi carrots though minus garlic I think. Khameeri roti is a fermented flatbread from Punjab and other places. Tibetan rice wine, chhaang, is seen as we have a considerable population of Tibetans in exile, an entire generation born and raised here. Then there's toddy/taadi (palm wine from different speciesof palms) in various parts of the country. Well thanks again; indeed the subject is interesting or even, as you say, fascinating. As usual the notification of this video met my eyes something like first thing in the morning but for once I delayed watching as the live inauguration of our new parliament building, indeed impressive, was on. A historic occasion.😊

As an organic gardener vegan, I've often wondered what role washing fruit and veggies play in B12 intake. Are there any studies (or is there a way) to test garden soil for B12 generating bacteria or B12 directly. Could you supplement soil with probiotics to boost B12 generating bacteria? Or could I use a GC to measure (at least differentially) different soils like industrial ag soil vs. forest vs. grassland vs. garden soils. Wondering also if B12 markers in soil are an analog to soil health - might make sense. Sounds like a great PhD thesis project. Great geek out subject - thanks for posting Mic!

So you said that mushrooms potentially contained B12 and that ferments had B12 maybe too. I put this together and fermented mushrooms. Potentially, maybe, sometime I might just have B12 rich fermented mushrooms!!! Wish me luck!

If I remember right( from 39 years ago when I first went Vegan and read about B12) Cobalt is also necessary to utilise the B12 bacteria, so I think Natural Water is the best source of B12 cos spring, lake etc water will have minerals like Cobalt as well as the B12 bacteria. Obviously if using a natural water source for B12 it would have to be tested for B12 and quantity in the water, interestingly the first Vegan pioneers of the 40’s were healthy and that was before B12 had been discovered. Some had babies, who grew up healthily. 🌻🌎✊🏽

That is fascinating. Still going to supplement. But glad that some rigid anti-supplement all-pro-natural plant-based eaters will have more options to get B12

That hydroponic lettuce with enough b12 in two lettuce leaves is awesome

Not only that but I once happened onto the section about B12 in the Merck medical manual that stated it stays in our systems (we can recycle it) for months.

Thanks for making this lovely video

I know this is kinda bad but, all I can think of is now I have a great (snarky) reply to when dieticians state, “B12 is only found in animal foods.” In eating disorder treatment, I’m always coming up against dieticians who are clearly biased against plant based diets, but refuse to acknowledge it. They’re always saying things about how an omni diet is superior because protein/calcium/iron/B12. Well, now I can come back at them with this! Haha!

Yes, this is very interesting to me, especially when you hear about long term vegans who never took B12. That would be a hit and miss with the largest odds being a miss, so yes, take those B12 supplements, please!

I love how you are so passionate about research. Inspiring to watch

I've been waiting for a doctor to talk about this. I researched this years ago and i have a pubmed study which gives many vegan sources of b12. I was curious why no one talked about it. At least eat a fully balanced whole food plant based diet, and supplement on top as insurance.

Thank you Mic!

seriously one of the best videos you've made so far and among the best for timing. Instant like - thank you.

Remember, i told you before that the parsley recipe you mentioned uses the parsley root, not the leaf.

I think the arguments for vegan foods not having B12 has always been silly. Like, it was and is today prolifically found in water, which we know we were drinking. And we were even getting it through this route with primitive sanitation like boiling and beer brewing. It's only very recently that B12 in our water supply has been removed due to chlorination and filtration.

This was an amazingly informative video. Very satisfied. Thank you.

This is so interesting! Now the big question: why the heck we don't consume all these B12-rich plant foods? How to make it available for regular people?

Wow thats incredible, I stroll every weekend on a coastal path that it's packed with sea buckthorn.. I did hear you could make a lovely sorbet with that, i would love to try it

I live in Ghana and I use Dawadawa as a spice. It ads a great meaty flawour. B12 suplements are kinda tricky to find and very expensive. If more studies were done on b12 in our local fermented foods (I wonder if kenkey, banku and millet porridge would have b12) that would really relieve me. At this point I can't recommend vegan diet to be consumed in Ghana as its just too big of a risk to run into b12 deficiency.

I wonder if traditional Belgian lager has B12. There are still a few breweries that do the old way of brewing using wild yeast, where the vats are open topped for a while and the ventilators in the roof are left open at night for wild yeast to enter and do it’s natural thing.

I eat _relatively_ healthy ceral with soy milk, also oats with nutritional yeast. It may not ne a competely natural source, but all of those ate fortified with b12, and that's only half of one meal for me in the morning.

*Thanks for the vid. One for the algorithm*

ok I haven't finished your video yet, but plant based b12 is probably an irregular amount, depending on soil etc. you could probably eat 50% or so the b12 from plants, but then you would still need to supplement! but this is good to know.

holy cow. Maybe I should restart brewing Kombucha!

Interesting! I grew up vegetarian, and having a diverse range of South Indian cuisine (lots of fermented dishes), with enough servings of fruit and vegetables. Fast food was not a thing for me until I moved to Canada and now Europe. I went vegan 3 years ago. I have done blood tests over the last 5 years, once a year and I'm always very high (close to the maximum in the healthy range) of B12. I have supplemented with a multi vitamin maybe 2 months (never consistently) in these years. I guess I must have met it with my diet.

I experimented with tempeh wrappers. I got higher omega3 when using kombu and higher b12 when i use duckweeds. The ones i wrapped in nori serves as vegan “fish” since i blended my beans then mix in my culture. It tastes better than the real fish in my opinion.

@MicTheVegan I have eaten Marmite and Vegemite (Spread for toast in many commonwealth countries) and being vegan for a decade, and veggie for more than double that time without any vitamin supplementation, and have consistently had really high levels of B12 when tested. I have this toast spread almost every other day, and some nutritional yeast. Not sure how much this plays into my high levels.

Thanks for sharing this awesome & informative video Mic. Yes we shouldn't stop supplementing.Always enjoy your video's.

We are living in Kenya right now and so funny you mentioned palm wine... that stuff is nice, if we were drinkers I'm sure we would frequent that but it's only good on the coast. This was a super cool video. I want to try fermenting beans now

I updated most post below that has the information regarding sargassum seaweed and Vitamin B12. Big secret in most countries. Only occurs when in WARM climates (so the bacteria on the surface grows well)

I enjoyed this. Thank u for the studies on b12

Low sugar cereal has plenty of B12. I eat cornflakes with soya drink which is also fortified with B12 Dark mushrooms are a great source of vitamin B12. Ive been vegan for 4 yrs and was vegetarian for 23 yrs before that. Its not only about not wanting to eat meat or consuming dairy. It goes far, much further & deeper than that. For me its totally part of my life eating as healthily possible as i can.

West Africa coming in clutch with the b12 tip. Represent.🎉😂❤😊

Looking forward to the followup of this video!

In short, as people have been saying for decades without mainstream research (common sense), grow your own food or purchase organic from as local as possible if you can. Overly commercialized anything is not anywhere near as healthy for you and is missing droves of important bacteria and other extremely important makeups to help your body thrive. Eat the rainbow in abundance and take high quality trustworthy supplements if necessary based on bloodwork, etc. This goes for all lifestyles/diets. Cheers

I would be really interested to see some results on homemade sourdough where bacteria work for weeks or months

Very cool! Thanks for the video.

As someone who's worked in a lab setting for 30 years, it's nice to hear HPLC get a shoutout!

Appreciate the research.

Loved the video bro . 🙏💚💚🙏

My favorite B12 go to's is mushrooms & nootch. I still supplement as tingly fingers and toes is freaky.

I love you man! Thanks for all your videos. 👊🤟💚😊

Thanks for starting this video the way you did. Even non-vegans are surprisingly likely to be deficient in B12 (which takes the teeth out of the only nutritional argument they sort of had against us). We should absolutely be supplementing B12.

I have a book about Barley Grass that says it has B12.

I remember cough grass now - they grew lawns with that until they realized it's not that good for lawns - taking up too much water and not being resilient enough. So they hybridized it to create franken grasses for lawns that're really hard to uproot and destroy the soil and are extremely invasive and intense. Couch grass was back in the day - like the 90s. Glad to see it's edible - I ate it as a kid by munching on it - until my parents told me to stop. I feel I was in the right - and this video proved it to me! I was getting my nutritional value - ok?

Palmyra Blossom Nectar by Sugavida according to the nutritional information contains B vitamins including B12.

I will definitely not stop supplementing but its cool to know all these foods contain b12! I wonder about b12 a lot and how our early ancestors got enough of it.

The Korean centenarian home made fermented foods had higher B12 because they added fish paste to it, lol. The Korean centenarian men take in about 269 mg cholesterol each day from foods so we know where the majority of the real B12 came from.

I think most health conscious folks will agree that the Ulta processed foods that we are offered in our grocery stores are nutrient deficient. We as a species need to get back to making food at home and teaching our young exactly how to do it for their health. Our modern world has made life easy and simple as well as potentially deadly.

Very interesting stuff! Thank you. It would be nice if we could specifically purchase B-12 producing bacteria/microbes to do our own home fermentation. And I'm fascinated by the alkaline fermentation--haven't heard of it before. It looked like miso was on that list? Course I'm familiar with miso, but didn't realize it was one of the foods that increased its alkalinity rather than acidity.

In my case I was a runner in 1981 and became vegan, I was not well informed about B12 i ended up living 4 months a 7,500 ft and started getting the worst pain in my Trapezius{shoulder} and a guy got me on Spruralina plankton (worst crap ever) but less problems, later i was advised as a vegan to supplement B12. I became a Vegan again in 2013 had same pain, took B12 it went away. I stopped taking it recently and had most pain there ever took several B12 and now one a day and its going away. When you exercise heavily like i do you need more of it.

Great video Michael! We will be re-launching Pure Lemna Greens powder (aka duckweeed)in a few months. It will provide 100% DV of bioactive B-12 in a single scoop. Also 10g of protein, Omega 3, rich in polyphenols, chlorophyll and fiber and vitamins and minerals all naturally occurring in the single ingredient - Lemna.

Wow that is so cool!

You do know that fiber prevents vitamin b12 absorption and that's why you need supplements, right? It's like swallowing a can of greens whole and having to supplement because your digestive track cannot open the can you swallowed... you do know thats a perfect analogy, right?

My lawn is couch grass. I'm not eating my garden clippings to get my vitamins!

red meat - the best source of bioavailable B12

Not high enough, don't forget to supplement.

What science says depends on the outcomes desired by those funding the research. Studies where those involved are ambivalent to the findings are to be trusted over those where the opposite is true. Studies should be discounted in proportion to how closely economic benefits are tied to specific outcomes. Unfortunately, most research falls into this compromised category.

The presence of the meat is not just about tge VB12. Its also about keeping a genetic processes running, when its absent, the process gets turned off over time. Even the supplements with B12 will not keep the process running.

I think the reason why dates have that much b12 since we usually don't wash dates before munching on them!!

i have to say this: end goal of health is to get b12 naturally from food and food preparation. to someday we humans never do any supplements or fortifying. everything we do have to go towards that goal. health comes first.

yayyyyyyyy good video

i get my B12 from nutritional yeast and chlorella. i’m done with pill form supplements

"Mushrooms aren't plants"? Why, because fungi don't count as plants?

My understanding is that those are B12 analogues, not fully developed B12. And it won’t really do you any good. Be very careful. I got very, very sick snd weak on my ‘strict vegetarian’ diet. I’m 6’1” and I weighed just 119 pounds! I was very, very weak, had difficulty even climbing stairs. Felt like I was gonna DIE! I was super spaced out, couldn’t concentrate or study. I had a swollen tongue and very painful ‘pins and needles’ feelings in my arms, hands, legs and feet. I foolishly believed the nonsense that the began doctors were saying about how you can get all the B12 you need by eating Miso, Tempeh, etc. BALONEY!!!!!!! There’s a good book titled ‘Could it be B12?’ Read it!

I've never taken B12 supplements, I've been vegan 8 years, feel better than ever, I had my bloods done at 5 years, the doctor was shocked how high my vitamin levels where, she thought I took supplements, then I told her I had been vegan for 5 years and that I had never taken supplements and she didn't believe me, straight up refused and said I must be eating fortified foods, but I don't, or I very rarely do if I get a coffee out and they use a vegan milk that is fortified

Mushrooms have Vitamin D and B12.

It is my understanding, dried Nori is a good source of B12 in adults - not so for children, it will deplete B12 in kids.

5:34 is this like drinking pickle juice - of parsley - like we do with pickles? Does pickle juice from fermented cucumbers have b12 if saurkraut juice doesn't? The study said pickles are inconsistent.

What is the best type of vegan B12 supplement? Any particular brand/price recommendations?

So is Kombucha a viable form of B12? If so that would be huge since that seems like a super easy thing to incoprate into diet and you can make it at home.

There's a reason why broccoli and cabbage taste so good.

Finally!! Thank you for this video. One question I always have as I do eat seaweed (mostly nori, or dulse) to get my iodine…is there a recommended time gap between supplementing with B12 and eating seaweed so that analogues don’t deplete your status? Or..should you supplement with a higher dose to offset the analogues? Currently I supplement 2000 mcg 1x week.

- A F a a a a a r r r r r More Thorough Amount Of Information Than I Was Expecting . Thank you . -

So we’re going with b12 analogues r real? so we could become b12 deficient consuming too much spirulina or non-dried nori or mushrooms since they occupy b12 receptors? If true then having more b12 wouldn’t work bc receptors stay blocked, for how long? So much more confused now

Curious why carnivores don’t supplement but vegans do? I’m really looking to find a lifestyle for best physical and mental health. I’ve found more positive reviews on animal based? I guess I’ll try both.

💚💚💚

Phrase you will never ever hear in a carnivore or keto video after a fragment of pro c or k info 12:22 …. “I don’t know, I was trying to corroborate this”. In fact the whole premiss of this video, ie don’t use the info to make a dietary decision because it is uncertain, is so unlike pro meat videos of every type.

I dont know why but dragonfruit yellow works for me

How about plant milk based yogurts made with Lactobacilli and Propionibactetium

I had bacon and egg for breakfast. Nice. 😄