Veg Mastery Program: Q&A 9 With Michael Klaper, MD. Topic: Vitamin B12. Copyright 2011 by The Vegetarian Health Institute

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We’re here with Dr. Klaper to talk about Vitamin B12. Dr. Klaper?

Dr. Klaper: Good evening, Trevor. It’s good to be with you and your interesting guests again. I really enjoy being here with you. B12 is a very important topic to discuss.

Trevor: Before getting to the questions, let's summarize for anyone who hasn't read the whole lesson. What are the concerns for vegans and vegetarians with Vitamin B12?

Dr. Klaper: Well, Vitamin B12 is an amazing molecule. It has a number of functions in the body. It’s required for production of red blood cells. It’s required for the function of nerve tissue in the spinal cord and peripheral nerves.

No animal makes Vitamin B12. It’s made by bacteria in the soil and the water. In olden times, people, even vegans, used to consume it in the well water they drank from.

People used to drink from streams and work all day in their gardens. They'd have little particles of soil under their fingernails. Anything eaten in a natural soil-rich and water-rich environment would contain B12. There wouldn't have been an issue, even without .

If they did eat animals, they would certainly get Vitamin B12. Not because cows or pigs make Vitamin B12, but they’re eating grass and nosing around in the dirt all day. They’re swallowing grass that has soil particles clinging to it.

Soil particles have the Vitamin B12. So the cow absorbs it and it deposits it in the muscles. That’s bacterial B12 in the cow’s muscle. The cow didn’t make it.

We need B12 in our own system. Without it we can develop severe anemia. More importantly, without B12 our spinal cord and peripheral nerves will get damaged.

At the risk of sounding ominous, all vegans will eventually develop Vitamin B12 deficiency unless they create a source in their diet. It may take years to show up, but it's serious business.

I’ve been a vegan physician for over thirty years now and I’ve seen several dozen vegans over the years come to me with serious B12 deficiencies.

These should never be allowed to develop. We have to take this seriously.

It’s a matter of where to get the B12. Nowadays it’s easy to do. You can just put a little tablet under your tongue and let it dissolve there. and various processed vegan foods are fortified with B12. 1

B12 is an essential part of any nutritional program. Fortunately it’s easy to sprinkle some fortified on your . Or put a little tablet under your tongue a couple times a month. It isn't a big inconvenience. But it shouldn’t be overlooked either.

Trevor: Well great. That was a good summary. I’ve got a couple questions.

You made a really good point that people shouldn’t rely on nutritional yeast as their sole source of B12 because it’s sensitive to sunlight. It’s possible that yeast in grocery-store bulk-bins is the wrong sort of yeast. It could have a label that says it is fortified with B12 and not be, correct?

Also, some people shun supplements – myself included. Many people feel that nutrients should come from whole natural foods. Is the B12 in nutritional yeast any different than the B12 in supplements?

Dr. Klaper: No. It’s the same B12.

The B12 is added to the yeast. It comes from bacteria that make B12, which are cultured in large vats. The B12 is separated out and then added to vitamin tablets and nutritional yeast. It's still coming from the same source.

Regardless of where your B12 comes from, the bacteria made it. If you get it from a cow rolling in the dirt, from a supplement, or wherever, the source is the same. It is “natural” B12 from any source. B12 is just a molecule created by a bacteria. It’s a strange distinction to say it is natural or unnatural.

Trevor: Well, let me rephrase it. If someone is using a lot of nutritional yeast in their diet thinking this is a food based B12 which is better than taking a supplement. Is there anything to that?

Dr. Klaper: No, there is nothing to that. The yeast, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, that is used for nutritional yeast, does not make B12. The yeast doesn’t make the B12. It is added to the product at the end. The vast majority of nutritional yeast has no B12 unless the company adds it.

Trevor: Got it. Okay.

Dulse, a seaweed, is a another source. You've mentioned that this is also not something you can use as your sole source. Dulse, however, can add some B12 to help fulfill your daily requirements.

What about the B12 in Dulse? Is it any higher quality than the B12 you get in the supplements?

Dr. Klaper: No. Unfortunately, it may be of lower quality.

Dulse is a sea with many molecules that are cousins to B12 that are inactive. They are called B12 analogs. Seaweeds are notorious for being loaded with analogs. An analog is very molecular similar to another molecule, but can not be used the same way.

Because the B12 analog may be present in the seaweed, your B12 receptors in your body may be fooled. If a B12 analog is occupying a receptor site, then the real B12 can not access the cell's receptor.

B12 analogs from seaweed may actually precipitate a B12 deficiency.

2 There is some B12 in dulse. Yet as an actual source, it’s a little dubious. I have to mention it to be intellectually honest. While dulse has B12 it is not advisable to use it as a source because the analogs may cause an imbalance.

My advice is to have a little dulse, a little yeast and a little of other fortified foods. Varied sources are always advisable, for any nutrient. But when it comes to B12, everything is very much like taking a supplement.

Trevor: Your lesson says that seaweeds like Nori have a lot of B12 analogs. Only dulse may contain real B12. Does that make dulse the best seaweed?

Dr. Klaper: Yes, it is the best seaweed for B12. All seaweed has lots of good iodine and minerals. Seaweed is wonderful and they should appear in your diet a couple times a week.

Of them all, dulse has the best chance of being a reasonable B12 source.

Trevor: You've just mentioned soil being a source of B12 in the past. What's changed in society that we no longer get B12 from dirt?

Dr. Klaper: The fertilizer. If you dig up vegetables in a forest, then the soil has been enriched with the excrement and decaying particles from dozens of lifeforms. Today, it's common for the soil to have little B12 present from modern fertilization techniques.

I have seen B12 deficiencies in raw food folks who think they're getting it from dirty garden vegetables. That will only be the case if the garden soil has B12-producing organisms.

It's tenuous to bet your spinal cord on the hopes that a couple of B12 granules may be in the soil clinging to your home-grown kale.

Animal manure is key to B12 presence in the soil. A veganic garden will not obtain B12 easily. In nature, deer and rabbits come by for a snack and leave fresh fertilizer in their wake. That's the B12 soil source.

We don't live in a natural world anymore, and there is nothing natural about the foods we're eating. It's too risky to risk a serious nervous system injury for the sake of “purity.”

Even your garden plants are not natural – the kale and collards – they've been hybridized over the years. Different air, chlorinated water – there is nothing natural about this world we're living in.

It’s not worth betting your nervous system on the hopes of living a “more natural life” at this point.

Trevor: Let me interject – some listeners might be feeling that you’re saying; “Oh, don’t bother even growing kale or collards.”

Dr. Klaper: No, do. Absolutely.

Trevor: Let me put it in lay person’s terms. There are people that we call “natural hygienists.” I can see, Dr. Klaper, that you’ve been in debates with them.

3 I feel like your reacting to the philosophy that they’ve put forth. The “don’t eat any supplements” philosophy, and “we should just eat food grown organically in our own gardens.”

For people listening, it’s not that Dr. Klaper is trying to discourage anyone from growing your own kale and collards. Rather, Dr. Klaper is pointing out that some supplements may be needed, even if you have your own organic garden.

Dr. Klaper: Exactly. I'm a thirty-year vegan. I have a big garden and I grow my own vegetables. I absolutely advocate doing that. We should build as natural and pure lives as we can.

Yet when it comes to this one unique and remarkable molecule called B12, that may not provide it for you.

Being vegan and growing your own food gives wonderful benefits. The non-violence approach, the minerals, and the phytochemicals are rewarding. If the whole world did that, I could hang up my stethoscope.

All sorts of good things would happen if we were all gardening vegans. We could dance around the maypole, disband the United Nations, and many other wonderful things. I’m all for that.

Yet Vitamin B12 becomes problematic and we need to deal with it.

Trevor: Right. B12 is one of a handful of nutrients that are particularly hard to get in a vegetarian or vegan diet.

For the ovo-lacto vegetarians that are listening, I really appreciate that you talked about the aspects of eggs and dairy. From what you wrote, eggs aren’t really a good source. What about diary?

Dr. Klaper: Because milk comes from cows, the cows will put a trace of B12 into the milk. So it will show up on cheese, etc.

I grew up on a dairy farm. I’ve known lots of cows. Quite honestly, when you squat down to put the milkers on the cow’s udder you see that the cow has been laying in manure.

Of course you wash the cow's udder before putting the milkers on, but you don't remove every microscopic spec of dirt. Is the B12 coming from the cow's milk, or is it from the manure?

There is some B12 in milk but not a lot. I wouldn’t rely on it as a sole food source for my B12.

You don’t need very much to ward off a deficiency. Eggs, surprisingly, don’t seem to have very much. It’s essentially negligible. If you’re eating large amounts of cheese and milk, you’re probably covered for B12.

Of course, with milk, you may be buying yourself a runny nose, allergies and other things. That's another issue. It'd take a sizable amount of milk to get enough B12. It's possible to obtain enough B12 from diary, but at what cost?

Trevor: Right. It’s not that anyone should rely on dairy as a sole source of B12.

4 For those who are already ovo-lacto vegetarians, some diary along with fortified rice milks, soy milks, or nutritional yeast will all contribute to fulfilling your daily B12 requirements.

Dr. Klaper: Well said.

Trevor: For anyone that is an ovo-lacto vegetarian and hasn’t read the lesson on that topic: One cup of 2% milk contains 1.29 micrograms of B12. Which is about one quarter of what you need each day.

Dr. Klaper: Right.

Trevor: Well, let’s go to the student questions coming in. We have a question from Judith: “Are Vitamin B12 shots a viable alternative for gastric bypass patients?”

Dr. Klaper: Absolutely. There is no purer way to get Vitamin B12 into the system. Injecting B12 directly into a muscle allows it to be absorbed directly into the bloodstream.

You don't need much with a B12 shot. They usually give 1,000 micrograms. Once or twice a month would be plenty. It certainly is an acceptable source.

Trevor: Then she also wonders: “Is Vitamin B12 ever given via I.V.?”

Dr. Klaper: Not really. There’s no real benefit to it.

Back when I worked in a hospital we would use an I.V. for patients after an operation. A squirt of multivitamins often went into the I.V. bag. There would be some B12 in the multivitamins.

It can go in through an I.V., but that’s a hospital situation. There’s no need or reason to inject Vitamin B12 intravenously.

Trevor: The next question is easy. I can answer this. We listed in the lesson that there are three ways that you can get enough B12 each day.

You can get 5 micrograms daily from fortified foods like cereal, or soy milk. You can take a daily supplement that offers 100 micrograms a day, preferably chewed. Or you can take a weekly supplement with 2,000 micrograms.

Their question is: “Do we need to do all three of these or just one?”

Dr. Klaper: What do you think, Trevor?

Trevor: Just one.

Dr. Klaper: Absolutely. Take your pick.

Trevor: Next question is from Carlos. Carlos's question is answered it in the lesson, but we'll answer it again now: “What is the best supplement to take? Why are so many supplements such a heavy dose, with the lowest being 3,000 times the daily allowance?”

Dr. Klaper: That’s an excellent question, Carlos. Very astute. We don’t need very much Vitamin B12. 5

Daily, the body only needs about two to three micrograms (that’s a millionth of a gram). A penny weighs three grams, and we’re talking about a millionth of a gram here.

The funny thing here is that the more B12 you take, the less you absorb. The returns are diminishing with the amount that you take. If you eat or take five micrograms, you'll absorb about two and a half, and that will fill your daily needs. You do use B12 daily, so you need to consume it regularly.

If you want to convince your body to absorb more than it's daily needs – more than two or three micrograms in a day – then you need to take a lot. If you take 100 micrograms under your tongue, then you can force five micrograms into your system.

If you’re going to take B12 weekly, you'd need to take 2,000 micrograms. By law of mass action, you could saturate all your receptor sites that way.

Fortunately, Vitamin B12 is quite benign. You can’t really overdose on it. So these larger amounts are needed just to saturate and drive the B12 into the tissues.

Trevor: This brings up a question. I understand that rice milk, soy milk and that are fortified with a B12 are not very different than the supplement. Right?

Dr. Klaper: Correct.

Trevor: If five micrograms daily from the fortified foods is adequate, why not take a daily tablet with that amount?

Dr. Klaper: When eating fortified foods, it goes to the stomach to be combined with something called the “intrinsic factor.” From there, B12 finds its way into the bloodstream from the intestine.

When taking a supplement, we're looking to bypass the intrinsic factor. Tablets take you put under your tongue absorb right through that membrane. When you're absorbing B12 in this way, it takes more B12 to force it across membranes.

Trevor: I see what you’re saying. Because a tablet doesn't take advantage of the intrinsic factor.

With the sublingual method, is there a reason you recommend a chewed tablet versus one that is not chewed?

Dr. Klaper: The more you chew it, the more it’s broken up, exposed to and slathered on the membranes in your mouth, under your tongue, and your cheek lining. That’s where the absorption happens. Dissolving in the mouth is ideal for bloodstream absorption.

Trevor: And what about a liquid sublingual?

Dr. Klaper: Those work very well.

Trevor: That’s at least as good as the chewed tablet?

Dr. Klaper: Yes. Also, the sprays and gel for your nose is just as good. These methods get the B12 into the bloodstream across the nostril membranes instead of within the mouth. 6

Trevor: I read something interesting in your in your lesson. It said that if someone was eating a standard diet, including meat, and just became vegan, it would take around a year to deplete their B12 stores. How does that work?

Dr. Klaper: We have a significant amount of B12 stored in the liver and other tissues.

Trevor: Given that our body can store B12, is it possible to build up our supply with supplementation in excess?

Dr. Klaper: Yes, it can be stored that way.

There’s a steady loss of B12 – like the drip, drip, drip from a faucet. You never want to let the B12 levels fall to a point where you start getting symptoms of sore tongue and numb fingers and toes.

It’s like taking a few pennies out of your bank account every day. Over months, those pennies begin to add up. The question is – what will you do about replenishing the B12 within the body?

B12 stores are only drawn upon if you're not getting B12 from supplements and food. You can get it weekly or daily. Sure, we may have a fair storage of B12, but you don't want to draw upon that store. It's there for a rainy day.

Trevor: I remember you recommending Dr. Fuhrman’s Gentle Care at one time. That's a multivitamin mineral. Does that have the daily requirement of B12 as well?

Dr. Klaper: I happen to have a bottle of it right here – let me check.

He’s got thirty micrograms. That’s certainly an ample amount. If you were to take his tablets, you would get enough B12.

Trevor: Moving on to the next question. Sassa asks, “How much B12 do toddlers between the ages of two and five need?”

Dr. Klaper: Didn’t I put that in the lesson?

Trevor: Don’t they get the same as adults?

Dr. Klaper: Basically, yes. We’re talking about such tiny amounts of a milligram of a benign substance that you can’t overdose. The amount for adults works for children.

You can certainly get away with less on a child. You can buy B12 fortified cereals or whatever, but you may also fortify food yourself.

Take a B12 tablet and crush it up and throw it into the blender when you’re making a smoothie. You may also sprinkle the crushed up tablets into cereal, rice or salad dressing. Anything may be fortified with B12.

There shouldn’t be a lot of anxiety about getting B12 into a child. Just give it to them in some form. The amount is roughly the range between full adult dose to half the amount.

7 Trevor: Is it also an option to use the liquid sublingual and add it to a drink for the child?

Dr. Klaper: Absolutely. That works.

Trevor: That wouldn’t even require crushing a pill?

Dr. Klaper: Nope, that would be even easier.

Trevor: Sassa also has an aside after her question that I want to comment on. Sassa wrote that even as an ovo-lacto vegetarian, it takes a lot of milk and yogurt to fulfill the daily requirement for B12.

I want to say that you don't need to consume additional dairy, or any dairy. We're telling our readers and listeners the amount of B12 in dairy for informational purposes for anyone who is already consuming dairy, or anyone who is curious.

With this information, you can gauge how much B12 you're already consuming, and how much more you may need. But we're not encouraging you to consume additional diary, or to start consuming it.

Dr. Klaper: Well said. I’m glad you said that.

Trevor: The next question from Nancy is: “Are B12 shots from your doctors a good source? How often should you get one?”

Dr. Klaper: B12 shots are an excellent source. The usual dose is 1,000 micrograms injected into a muscle. Usually the thigh muscle. Once a month is more than enough. People can do it themselves if desired.

I’ve got patients who’ve had stomachs removed. Once a month they fill up the syringe and give themselves injections. They just jab the side of their thigh or hip.

People give themselves insulin injections and allergy injections. You can certainly give yourself a B12 injection. You can have the doctor do it for you if you like though.

Once a month; 1,000 micrograms; works well.

Trevor: This one’s from Cindy. She wants to know why her spray B12 supplement tells her to take 1,200 micrograms twice a day. Isn’t that way too much?

Dr. Klaper: I think they’re trying to sell more vitamins. You shouldn't need 1,200 micrograms twice a day. No. Especially sprayed under your tongue. You only need two micrograms daily.

Feel free to do that once a day or every other day. That would be plenty.

Trevor: That reminds me of something I heard about shampoo companies. After they created shampoo they were trying to figure out how to make people use more shampoo faster. They wanted to sell more.

They added instructions to the back that said: “Shampoo your hair, rinse, and shampoo again.”

Dr. Klaper: Right. Well said. An apt analogy. That’s the same as that bottle of B12. I agree. 8

Trevor: You talked about how there are companies that produce alga, spirulina and other green powders. They often say that their products include B12. If they make that claim they should be held to a gold standard of proof.

Dr. Klaper: Right.

Trevor: I wasn’t sure what you meant by that, “A gold standard of proof.”

Dr. Klaper: I don’t want to get too technical here. When you’re measuring Vitamin B12, there’re several different assays that are used. The cheapest one is a matter of growing bacteria. Or just doing a rough chemical analysis on it.

The problem is that B12 analogs will give you a false positive reading. The B12 analogs will make the bacteria grow. As well as show up on your chromatograph as molecules in the B12 family.

They don’t make a specific identification of the actual cobalamin molecule. There are some tests. They’re more expensive. But there’s a particular bacteria – Ochromonas – that requires Vitamin B12 to grow. Ochromonas won’t grow without it.

Testing your supplement to see if it will support the growth of ochromonas bacteria is the gold standard test. It requires B12.

It’s a very finicky, expensive assay to do. They don’t like doing that. There’s more quick and dirty ways to do it.

The issue is that B12 analogs take up the role that B12 should be playing and can even give you a B12 deficiency. The problem with these assays is they count B12 analogs.

It gives you a false security in something you shouldn’t feel secure about, because it may be full of analogs.

The gold standard is the ochromonas growth test. If someone is saying they have Vitamin B12 I would need to see the results of that assay specifically. If they just put it into a chromatograph and looked for coronoid molecules, that’s going to be all full of analogs.

Trevor: In other words. It’s easy for someone to do a type of test where they can say, “Hey, look at all this B12 in our food,” even though the type of test they do isn’t accurate.

Dr. Klaper: That’s correct. Well said.

Trevor: We have another question from Cindy. If someone doesn’t have enough B12 what are the initial symptoms they might see before major problems occur?

Dr. Klaper: A very important question. I have to choose my words carefully here. I don’t want to make the people all hypochondriacal about this. The early signs are really subtle.

It could just be fatigue. A little headache. A little muscle soreness. And who doesn’t get that from time to time? Those are fairly subtle signs. Those are early ones that show.

9 A doctor will think about a B12 deficiency if your tongue gets sore. With the B12 deficiency, it starts getting more tender, beefy, red and smooth. The fine little tastebuds kind of flatten out. That is a late sign.

If you have a persistent sore tongue as a vegan who doesn't take B12, that's a very serious sign. Then the peripheral nerves all the way up to the spinal cord start getting affected.

The first thing you know is you feel like you’re wearing gloves when you’re not. There’s kind of a fuzzy numby feeling on your fingertips and toes. Left untreated, it will progress to actual numbness. You’ll hit your hand and not feel it.

The worst part is the spinal cord starts degenerating. Then you start losing coordination and ability to walk well. You get a strange staggery kind of gate. These are all late signs. But that’s where it progresses to.

Ultimately, the best thing to do is to use a supplement if there is any question of B12. Go to your doctor and get your B12 measured. Along with a substance called MMA.

MMA is methylmalonic acid. When there’s not enough B12, MMA starts going up in the blood stream. Some doctors just use MMA as a good B12 index. And that’s not a bad idea.

If you have normal MMA then your B12 is probably adequate. If your MMA is elevated then you’ve got a B12 deficiency.

Why not measure the B12 directly? Because many of the tests measure analogs. Even in the blood. If you’ve been eating a lot of Nori and you’ve loaded up your body with a bunch of analogs then the test may be inaccurate.

Due to the analogs, you could go the lab, have blood drawn and the reading will come back fine even when it may not be.

They weren’t really measuring Vitamin B12. They were measuring the family of coronoids that B12 is part of. A simple blood test is not the ochromonas assay test. They just ran it through a chromatograph that gives very crude analysis. You’ll get a falsely high reading, even in your blood.

These analogs are really sneaky. So you need to get your B12 checked, but also make sure they do an MMA as well if you really want to find out. Don’t rely on clinical signs.

If you’re concerned, go to your doctor and have a B12 and an MMA level checked. Or just go ahead and put a little tablet under your tongue and be done with it.

Trevor: By the way, folks. This stuff is in the written lesson. You can have it sitting in front of you so you can reference it when you’re talking to your doctor. It’s all in there.

We don’t have another question yet from the students. But I’ll ask one that came up on an earlier call before. It was a call that you weren’t on, Dr. Klaper.

A woman had asked: “Shouldn’t we be concerned about consuming nutritional yeast? Because doesn’t too much yeast in one’s diet lead to things like Candida?”

10 Dr. Klaper: I’m glad you brought that up. The answer to the question is no. The problem is that yeast has become such a loaded word. It’s been adopted by the public. The scientists mean one thing by yeast, whereas the public means something else.

What do I mean by that? Yeast is a huge biological family that contains many different organisms. It's comparable to the animal kingdom. The animal kingdom contains both butterflies and giraffes. Even though they are both animals, they are not similar.

It's the same with yeast. In the huge family of yeast you’ve got this guy Candida Albacans. That guy causes vaginal itches in women, plaques in children’s mouths, and intestinal overgrowths that give you diarrhea. And all that stuff. Yes, that’s true. They’re in the yeast family.

However, Candida Albacans is not Saccharomyces Cerevisiae. The type of yeast that ferments beer or turns into beer, and is made into nutritional yeast.

They are two totally different parts of the yeast family. When they harvest the Saccharomyces to make nutritional yeast they dry it and I believe they bake it at fairly high temperature. The yeast all breaks up and gets all crumbly. It is not alive. No matter how much of it you eat. One, it’s a different organism. And two, it’s dead powder.

There’s nothing there that’s going to grow anything. The yeast that you’re concerned about is alive inside your gut. Everybody’s got Candida down in their gut. The issue is when it proliferates, and you continue to feed it sugary foods in excess.

Sprinkling a little bit of this yellow powder on your rice and eating it will not cause yeast to grow in your gut. There’s no live yeast components in it. So it really won’t add to the yeast burden in your body. Sugars will but eating yeast won’t.

Trevor: Well then, another question has come in. This is a good one.

If you're getting an adaquare supply of B12 every day, is there any way to deplete B12 from the system? Like from stress?

Dr. Klaper: Good question. Thankfully the answer is no. It’s a pretty resilient molecule. It’s in all your tissues. It’s fairly rooted in the cellular matrix there.

So you’re not going to deplete it with stress or anything like that. It’s an interesting point, but nothing to lose any sleep over.

Trevor: I heard in the past from an anecdote that you could get B12 from fermented foods like and . You made a point in the lesson that those do not contain B12 consistently. Why is that? Was there a time when those foods had B12 and something changed since then?

Dr. Klaper: Big gold star for you, Trevor. That last statement you made. Well, that’s the crux of it. You just added this little tail there. That’s correct.

Fermented foods used to be a good source of B12. Classically, making sauerkraut or tempeh involved opening a big porcelain crock and throwing inside it shredded cabbage. Then you may add salt and water.

11 This crock would be open to the air and there are B12-producing bacteria in the the air. The spores would land on the surface of the mixture along with other bacteria. Lactobacillus, etc., that start the fermentation process. Then you would allow for it to ferment for two to four weeks or longer. This is in a porcelain pot that’s in somebody’s home.

There was plenty of time and opportunity for B12 to develop there. The same thing is true when making tempeh. You let these things ferment for weeks and weeks. There’s plenty of time for B12 organisms to grow there and produce B12.

That’s in the classic method of production. But welcome to the 21 st Century.

Nobody does that anymore. Kraut today is made in high production factories with stainless steel vats that are scrubbed out with carbolic acid between each batch so that every little bit of B12 bacteria is long gone. This is done using various techniques of heat and pressure to speed up the process.

So there just isn’t the physical time for the B12 to develop and for the beneficial nutrients to set in, like they used to do when Grandma was making it. If this is actually done in the classical way of making kraut or tempeh, then there should be some B12.

The commercial one you buy in the store these days probably has not been created with methods that allow B12 development to happen in the product.

Trevor: Well, I’m glad you mentioned sauerkraut. Because I know that amongst my raw food friends sauerkraut is a recipe that’s fairly common that they’ll make from scratch. So you’re saying if somebody is already into making homemade sauerkraut and they follow these guidelines, then there could be some B12 in their sauerkraut?

Dr. Klaper: Yes, there certainly could be.

Trevor: What would be an accurate way for someone to gauge how much B12 –

Dr. Klaper: There’s the rub. That’s, of course, the problem. If you have $2,000 you could send one off to the lab and have it clinically analyzed. Or you can just use that as your sole B12 source for a couple years and see if your tongue gets sore or tingly.

Those are the only two ways that I know. That’s the problem. You have to do an assay or see if it’s clinically active. But those are both two expensive ways to do it.

Just put a little tablet under your tongue.

Trevor: For those people that are making sauerkraut. What are things they can do to increase the odds that a greater amount of B12 –

Dr. Klaper: I’m not a sauerkraut-ologist. There may well be cultures you can add to it, possibly. Again, it all depends on what’s blowing in the air as the kraut mixture is exposed to it. Whether any B12- producing spores are going to land there.

You’re asking the wrong guy. I’m not a sauerkraut making fellow. I’m sure if we took Grandma’s sauerkraut that’s really been fermenting for a number of weeks there’s bound to be some B12 in there

12 before it all turns to acid and kills the bacteria. But unless you send it off to a lab, I really don’t know any other way of determining how much is really actually in there.

Trevor: I don’t know too many people who are making homemade tempeh or miso. But if someone was –

Dr. Klaper: It may well have some. It could be a very rich source. It is possible. I think it would be fun to do. To actually send some off to a lab and find out. It could be a very valid source.

Trevor: I’m feeling compelled to say something about the issue of getting B12 from dairy products. Since we have some time here at the end. I broached this topic on the first or second Q&A call before you had gotten involved, Dr. Klaper. And people were telling me: “Hey, I signed up for the vegan mastery program. How come you’re talking about eggs and dairy?”

We’re running two curriculums simultaneously. There’s the vegan mastery program and the vegetarian mastery program. Most of the material is the same for both groups. The primary lessons apply to everyone.

We're posting an addendum for ovo-lacto vegetarians for any additional comments that apply for eggs and dairy. I have a personal commitment not to scare anyone into making choices one way or another. Whichever someone chooses, I'm here to help that person thrive on that diet.

That’s why I want to make sure we cover both bases. In the example of B12 from dairy, it's probably not healthy to drink a quart of milk daily to get enough B12. If you've chosen an ovo-lacto diet, we just want to let you know how much you are consuming already.

Do you have anything to add Dr. Klaper?

Dr. Klaper: No. I think that was well said, and I'm glad of it.

Trevor: In terms of your personal choices, you're an ethical vegan, right? I respect that as a choice. I started out that way as well myself. At the same time, you’re giving people the straight truth just from a nutritional scientific standpoint as far as what is in the food they’re eating. Whether it’s strictly plant foods or whether it includes eggs or dairy.

Dr. Klaper: Correct. I wish people were not growing and eating animals, but they are. There is some nutritional benefit in those products, and we may as well cover them, especially for people consuming them. I share information as I see it scientifically.

Trevor: Thank you. Well, great. We don’t have any more questions, so we’re going to wrap it up for today. We’ll look forward to seeing all of you at the same time next week. Thanks a lot.

Dr. Klaper: Thank you, Trevor. Well done. Have a great night.

Trevor: Okay, you too. Good bye.

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