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Vitamin B12 derived from geneticaly modified spirulina
(scitechdaily.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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You don't need to, but it would be nice if you did.
Plants literally just don't have B12 vitamin. You can't have a steady pure-vegan diet without supplements.
Or at least you could not before. Now, once this becomes commercialized, you will be able to just buy a complete diet!
Is there an advantage of buying 'artificial' plants rather than straight up buying vitamins? For me buying special B12 algae would be quite similar to 'regular' supplements.
The algae are natural, except they are modified so you can actually absorb the B12 vitamin from them. B12 pills are less appealing within a soup than an algae.
Also, you absorb the vitamins in a natural way, instead of all at once. So it is better for your health.
Supplements are the option you choose only when you have no other, and there is research showing how it is bad for your health.
I'm guessing easier to produce than vitamin pills as well.
If you don't like pills, there's also powder, drops etc. that you can take instead and which you can also add to your food or drinks. There's also vegan milk alternatives and convenience food that already has B12 included.
If I wanted to supply my needs with algae only, I'd probably also want them in a powdered form or similar as fresh algae - even if refrigerated - turn bad pretty quickly.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy if they invented another vegan source for B12, I just don't see the huge difference or advantage compared to status quo.
The main argument that vegans can't survive on just a vegan diet, is now moot. Though with the caveat that this is technologically intensive. Also, vegans could technically survive with certain plants like Chlorella.
From my perspective that argument is pretty stupid in the first place and just a smokescreen to object a vegan diet. Those people will either not listen to facts at all or find new reasons to justify an omnivore diet.
A 100% vegan diet shouldn't be the goal.
Converting 10 people to a 90% vegan diet is more achievable than making 9 people 100% vegan.
I agree, but I don't understand how this contradicts my comment. People who insist that 'veganism is unnatural because you should supplement B12' never did the slightest research.
There's absolutely no issue to supplement nutrients as long as it's a reasonable dose corresponding to your needs.
Wasn't trying to prove you wrong. I was trying to say that Vegan + a bit of cheese (b12) is perfectly fine for the "can't do vegan" people.
Similarly, people who can't live without their steak/burger/bacon. Fine. Only have it once a week, or once a month.
Thank you for communicating, I appreciate the creative wordplay in your username!
For all eternity, I believe, we can very well aim towards fueling our metabolisms (popularly referred to as eating) kindly, thus; ethically, and completely vegan.
While indeed presently beginning wherever, and with whatever we can. All the best! • ♡ ☻ ❂
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Personally we can aim for 100% but we are more likely to influence someone from carnivore -> 90% vegan than carnivore -> 100% vegan.
you already answered so well, I could've saved some time had I noticed it before :)
Anyways, chlorella (to my knowledge) does naturally contain vitamin B12 produced by bacteria in chlorella's habitats. So even seems completely natural to me.
in short: I assume chlorella is more cost-effective for you and producers, and more aligned with our environment.
When you want to, I can recommend to further look into it, and there probably is a lot I did not mention: Chlorella, in natural circumstances, contains vitamin B12 — seemingly synthesized by bacteriae in chlorella's habitat — and according to the publication (I linked below) even contains precursors to, ánd vitamin D(2) itself.
It has an outstanding nutrient profile — as mentioned in a previous comment 3g of it fulfills the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) of B12.
I will follow up with a few assumptions mixed with references and a quote from the study regarding advantages of chlorella:
Bonus: As also mentioned in the publication: shiitake and other mushrooms can contain Vitamin D after Sun (or other UV-light exposure). I see a complete plant-based, natural, and vegan diet as perfectly possible and eat that way myself, pretty happily so.
I hope I provided valuable assistance in any way.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7551956/
[1](Bito T, Okumura E, Fujishima M, Watanabe F. Potential of Chlorella as a Dietary Supplement to Promote Human Health. Nutrients. 2020 Aug 20;12(9):2524. doi: 10.3390/nu12092524. PMID: 32825362; PMCID: PMC7551956.)
Isn't bacteria (e.g. Propionibacterium freudenreichii) also how vegan B12 is produced already today? So for me personally it's pretty much the same process as we know it for years without involvement of algae.
Thank you kindly for sharing, I hadn't considered that! That makes complete sense.
I assume bioavailability might favor the ancient practice of natural symbiosis of bacteria with plants in their natural habitat anyways, and acknowledge we can certainly recreate such environment well to farm vitamin B12 specifically.
The large range of nutrients accounts to me favoring chlorella over other options.
If you get your food from factory farming, you can't have any diet without B12 supplements.
We killed the bacteria that make B12 in the soil.
The only difference with meat is, the livestock gets the B12-fortified feed. It's supplementation with extra steps.
There's nothing natural about it.
As alluded to in further comments, certain plants do naturally contain vitamin B12 (seemingly produced by bacteria in their environment).
Yeah, I hear that the B12 vitamin amount for mushrooms is unreliable. I am not certain about other plants, or if there is another reliable source.
Fun fact: mushrooms are closer related to animals than to plants.
Man...
Anecdotally:
I have watched a ~3 minute video on B12 availability somewhere within the past 6 months.
It entailed that B12 gets mainly produced by symbiotic plants and used to naturally be in humans' and plants' diets. According to the video due to the antibacterial and anti 'this that and the other' chemical treatments we treat our produce with, the B12 produced by the bacteria disappeared in our produce.
It absolutely impacted me hearing that (again, according to that video) the B12 in animals and their produce mostly gets added by supplements into their diets (since the plants we feed them don't contain the B12 vitamins anymore due to pesticides and such) which means (according to the video) most of the "natural" B12 in animals is chemically produced B12 and only B12 of plants which can live symbiotically with certain bacteria contain "natural" vitamin B12.