Weaning My Vegan Baby- Part 12: Superhero Spray

My vegan baby’s vitamin B12 spray came in the mail this week and I immediately realized one thing- I bought too much of it!

It was pretty cheap, to begin with, but there was a discount for buying more bottles so I got two and when we opened the box my partner pointed out that the number of sprays in each bottle would mean that it would last our baby well beyond the expiration date! So I guess we will be swapping our B12 melts for a few sprays a week to make sure we use it up before it expires.

This proved to me that supplementing our baby’s diet with B12 is super cheap. Though- we could have added nutritional yeast or Marmite/Vegemite to his meals so he was getting everything from his food but that would have ended up being a lot more expensive and provided an unknown amount of the vitamin, so why not supplement instead?

I’ve had a few people quip that if vegans need to supplement B12 then there must be something wrong with a plant-based diet, as we should be able to obtain all our nutrients from food but I honestly feel like most people would benefit from analyzing their nutrient intake and supplementing anything that they’re lacking, regardless of what type of foods they eat.

It’s also worth noting that before the advent of modern farming practices, B12 would have been abundantly available via foods grown in soil but these days we would not be able to rely on that due to all the washing, etc. that our food goes through.

Even animals raised for meat may not get enough B12 for this reason, along with antibiotic use in farming, so most have their diets supplemented with the vitamin.

Our baby has so far eaten only whole plant foods without any added salt or sugars and I’ve seen a lot of babies his age with slices of lunch meat or lollipops in their hands, so I’m pretty happy with his diet.

I worried that he wouldn’t like taking his vitamin but our little one seems to love his ‘superhero spray’- hopefully, that lasts as he grows up!

Happy Vegan, everyone! We are very happy that you have found us, and that you’re raising little vegans. The world needs more people like you.

Raise humanity. Raise vegan!