Vitamin Supplements

Many statements have been made about vitamin B12, most commonly that B12 can boost energy. Scientific evidence does not substantiate most of these claims, although research does show promise in the area of cardiovascular health.

How Much Vitamin B12 Do You Need?

Your body needs little vitamin B12. Consequently, RDAs are low— for example, only 2.0 mcg for adult men and women.

Optimal Daily Vitamin B12 Cobalamin Allowance

For you to achieve optimal health, we recommend taking 5 mcg of vitamin B12 per day—about two-and-a-half times the RDA. We think this is important because of the role that vitamin B12 plays in reducing levels of homocysteine, the amino acid that, in large amounts, may contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease.

How Much Vitamin B12 Are You Getting?

Before you decide that you need to take vitamin supplements or change the way you eat, you should know where you stand and how much improvement you really need. To help you analyze your current diet, we’ve developed a system you can use to calculate your approximate vitamin B12 intake. Following is a list of vitamin B12 food sources, arranged according to the percentage of our Optimal Daily Allowance of vitamin B12 contained in them. Since a 3 ounce serving of halibut contains 1.01 mcg of B₁₂—about one-fifth of the ODA—we’ve listed halibut in the 20 Percent category. (We have erred on the conservative side when rounding off percentages.)

To determine your average daily intake of vitamin B12, start by keeping an accurate food diary for three or four days. The longer you keep the diary, the more accurate your calculations will be. Write down exactly what you eat and drink, together with an estimate of the serving size. Don’t concern yourself with precisely how much B12 each food item contains; simply use the list to find the food item and the percentage of the ODA that it provides. Then add up all these percentages to see if you reach 100 percent each day.

If a particular item in your meals is missing from this list (it would be impossible for us to include every food item here), use the nutritional information on the food packaging. Most packaged foods are required to list their vitamin contents on the label.

After you’ve determined how much vitamin B12 you are obtaining from your diet each day, you can calculate whether you need to take supplements to reach the ODA. Let’s say that you determine that you are getting 80 percent of your vitamin B12 target through diet alone. You are consuming 4 mcg of B12 in your diet (80 percent x 5 mcg = 4 mcg). To make up the difference, we would advise you to supplement your diet with 1 mcg of vitamin B12 in tablet form (5 mcg – 4 mcg =1 mcg).

Virtually all multivitamin formulations will provide you with the extra B12 you need. (One popular brand contains 9 mcg of B₁₂.) Remember that no adverse effects have been reported with high doses of vitamin B12, so you can consume doses even larger than the ODA to meet your needs without risk.

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