Vitamin B12 in Huel

Since I started taking Huel, I have become very interested in a vegan diet, or at least heavily reducing the amount of meat and animal products I consume on a daily basis. I read that vitamin B12 can only be found in meat, fish and eggs and other animal products. I don’t know whether this is true of not, but I would be interested in where the B12 in Huel actually comes from. Anyone have any ideas? Many thanks!

Hi @Zattifier we use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanocobalamin as the source of B12.

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Hey @Julian

Firstly, really like your support here.

From what I have read previously, Cyanocobalamin is just a synthetic of B12 and is widely used because of its price. Since B12 is so important in our diet, do you ever think methylcobalamin or another form will ever be used? (I understand if this was to happen it would affect the price).

Don’t worry Zattifier, Vitamin B12 isn’t an animal product, it is just more commonly found in meat. The reason for this is that only bacteria and archaea can naturally produce B12. In our time that bacteria is most commonly found on meat, but going back it would probably have been all over our vegetables too since the bacteria would be in the soil that they are grown in. The only reason this isn’t true today is because our vegetables are so overly sanitised, for better or worse.

So in short, no animal is capable of producing B12, so no need to worry on the vegan front. None of that really matters with Huel though, as Julian points out, they use a synthetic source.