K first of all I’d like to clarify I’m not against vegetarianism at all. I’m not trolling or anything. Just considering a few things. Like, if we’re meant to eat mostly fruits and veggies, then why does it seem like nothing has any B12 in it? There has to be SOMETHING out there that is rich enough in B12 to support a 100% vegetarian diet. I understand that B12 is a bacteria and not actually grown by any plants or animals, but by this logic, shouldn’t meat also contain absolutely no B12, too? How does naked’s green machine drink have 25% RDA of B12 in 8oz if it’s supposedly just natural plants? Is it unnaturally added? It seems something’s rotten in Denmark.
don't know about packaged drinks as i never buy such things, but if you're gardening, the answer might be poop from what i've read you make the stuff in your lower colon, too low for re-absorption use poop for fertilizer [perhaps not your own] and don't wash too carefully like the olde tymes! note, i might be talking out of my ass, so to speak . . .
even if they add it to foods, everything comes from the earth someway and is semi-natural. Scientists don't just poof random things into existence...at least I hope not....
Vitamin B12 is not bacteria; it is synthesized by bacteria, so one theory as to why we don't make enough of it ourselves is because we (and our food) are basically too clean. B12-synthesizing cultures abound in soil.
So how come animals have B12 in them? For the same reason that you have B12 in you. Where did you get it from? You ate it. It got absorbed from your food and stored in your body tissues for future use. Same as a cow does. The cow's flesh has B12 because it ate the bacteria that produce it. Where does it get the bacteria? It eats grass that it has crapped on. In earlier times, we used to get B12 the same way. Manure was routinely used for fertilizer, and people weren't too fussy about washing their food. Nowadays, you mention bacteria and people go, "Ew, ew! Icky!" So we can't get it from natural plant-based sources any more. We either have to get it from meat, from artificially fortified foods, or go back to eating unwashed manure-fertilized veggies.
