it is corporate myth that b12 is only available in animal products.
No.
most of the reasons many plants no longer contain b12 or other minerals is that weve depleted many of the micronutrients in our soil (globally) and plants are typically "malnourished". conventionally grown produce is especially depleted of micronutrients, with GMO organisms have very low bio-availability of most nutrients. many vegetable products such as mushrooms, soybeans, barley, spinach... would contain adequate amounts of b12 if they were grown in restored soil.
No, the reason is that B12 is produced by bacteria, and today we grow plants in as sanitary of an environment as is reasonable. If plants are not completely washed, they can contain vitamin B12 -- but you'll taste grit.
http://www.ajcn.org/content/48/3/852.full.pdf+html
Is there nutrient depletion? Yeah, but this usually applies to selenium, manganese, molybdenum, iodine, etc -- not organic molecules, which have a short lifetime in soil as they readily degrade anyway.
given that bit, it wont be too many more generations before animals also are unable to have biomagnified / bioavailable nutrients like b vitamins, calcium and electrolytes, etc. that is of course, if us agri-activists arent thwarted from intervening. few outside of this political realm are aware at the damage done to the Earth's soil, globally. once we humans have finished off our slow form suicide, the Earth will easily restore such minerals in a few million years, so it aint so tragic I suppose.
Again, B12 is produced by bacteria, which, if tuberculosis is any indication, simply aren't going anywhere. The (currently proposed and not fully verified) reason is that B12, like other B-vitamins, is a
big ugly complex molecule and it is
not energetically favorable for macroorganisms to produce it.
that being said, plenty of oceanic algae contain b12. try finding a raw product which contains blue green algae. I believe raw nori also contains significant levels of b12. you would want to stray far from anything produced not according to organic standards, and anything pasteurized, or cooked in any way.
Algae are simply unreliable and may be counterproductive. From the top link:
"The wide range of B12 analogues from one measurement method to another indicates that spirulina has a wide variety of different analogues, many of which are inactive. Some may interfere with B12 activity in humans.
The one study measuring B12 activity in people fed a combination of spurilina and nori found that their B12 activity actually decreased "
It is very easy to ignore the facts, but it is not healthy.
In
certain subsets of the population there are bacteria in the small intestine which produce B12.
It has not been conclusively demonstrated that everyone has these. Human intestinal flora vary widely based on location and diet.
If you don't believe me, here are a
plethora of papers re: b12 in vegans. Sure, all of these scientists are lying; they spent ten years in grad school so they could trick ideologically pure vegans into taking a ten-cent vitamin supplement. Also, the government is scanning your brain and you can stop them by wearing tinfoil.
