Myth Busting: What is the Deal with B12 and Iron?

Vitamin B12 is needed for cell division and blood formation. You may hear people say that we “need” to eat animals in order to get vitamin B12. Well, the truth is, neither plants nor animals make vitamin B12. Rather, bacteria are responsible for producing it. Animals get their B12 from eating foods contaminated with B12, and then the animal's flesh becomes a source of B12. Plant foods do not contain vitamin B12 except when they have vitamin B12 added to them or when the dirt on the plant is not removed. Thus, vegans need to look to fortified foods or supplements to get vitamin B12 in their diet.

There are a several types of foods fortified with B12, such as cereal, soy milk and nutritional yeast. Vegans who choose to use a vitamin B12 supplement should use them regularly. In order to meet your needs, you should take a daily vitamin B12 supplement of 5-10 micrograms or a weekly vitamin B12 supplement of 2000 micrograms.

What about Iron? Iron deficiency is the most common deficiency in the US… but that is true for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Amounts of Iron in vegan diets tend to be higher or at least equal to non-veg diets… why? Because we eat lots of healthy veggies and grains! Dried beans and dark leafy greens are especially good sources of Iron... better on a per calorie basis than meat. Iron can also be found in mushrooms, broccoli, soy beans lentils, quinoa, tofu, dried apricots, and blackstrap molasses.

Dairy is a poor source of Iron and the presence of dairy in the body has been proven to decrease absorption by 50%. Iron absorption is increased noticeably by eating foods containing vitamin C along with foods containing Iron.

There you have it... that's all I've got for today.