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"Safest Source of B12"

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What’s the best way to get vitamin B12?

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Well, B12 is not made by plants;

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not made by animals either.

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It’s made by certain bacteria,

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some of which line the guts of animals,

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of which people eat and drink.

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But that’s not the best source,

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because of the baggage 
that comes along with it.

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Just like we can’t get the iron in 
beef without the saturated fat,

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the protein in pork without lard,

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the calcium in dairy without hormones;

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we can’t get the B12 in animals without 
also consuming stuff we don’t want—

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like cholesterol.

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For example, to get 47 
micrograms of B12 from eggs,

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because the absorption is so low,

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we’d have to literally eat hundreds
of scrambled eggs a day.

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200 to 400 eggs a day!

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Do you know how much
cholesterol that would be?

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If you got all your B12 
from scrambled eggs,

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you’d consume 69,000 
milligrams of cholesterol—

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practically your entire 
year’s worth every day.

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So, yes, chickens harbor bacteria;

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the bacteria make B12;

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some of that B12 
makes it into the chicken,

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and then into the egg—

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but so does the cholesterol.

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There has to be a better way!

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Why don’t the bacteria 
in our colon make B12?

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They do, actually.

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It’s just too far downstream 
to be absorbed.

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In one of the less appetizing but 
more brilliant experiments in the field,

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a Dr. Callender delineated that human 
colon bacteria make large amounts of B12.

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Although the B12 is not 
absorbed through the colon,

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it is active.

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How do we know?

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She found some vegan 
volunteers with B12 deficiency,

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collected their stools for 24 hours,

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and then, you guessed it,

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bon appetit!

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And it worked!

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They were cured.

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Those are some hardcore vegans.

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There has to be a better way!

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And thankfully, there is:

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fortified foods and supplements.

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Not only the safest, but 
also the most effective.

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In the U.S. Framingham Offspring Study,

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one in six meat-eaters between 
ages 26 to 83 were B12-deficient.

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The folks with the highest B12 levels

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weren’t the ones eating 
the most animal products,

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but the ones taking supplements,

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and eating the most 
fortified breakfast cereal.