Nutritional Yeast

Food · Pantry & Condiment · Food, Typed Supps

A savoury powder that happens to be one of the densest B-vitamin foods there is.

Stage by stage

Savoury (Taste): Free glutamates from the yeast give it the cheese-like note it is used for.
Folate (Small intestine): 2,340 mcg per 100 g — a 10 g serve exceeds a day’s requirement several times over.
Zinc and niacin (Circulation): 18 mg zinc and 28 mg niacin per 100 g, both unusually high for a food.
B12 gap (Nervous system): Yeast makes none. If the pack does not say fortified, there is none in it.

Timing

No timing constraint. The one thing to check is B12 fortification on the label, which varies by brand.

Time to effect

Weeks: Folate status responds quickly at these intakes.
Months: B12 repletion, and only from fortified product.

Allergens

None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Keto, Low-FODMAP.

Satiety

Not scored: the satiety index is measured on 240 kcal servings, and nobody eats a 240 kcal serving of this. The question does not apply rather than the answer being unknown.

Cost band

Mid — roughly £5 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 269
Protein: 36.4g
Carbohydrate: 6.3g
Fat: 5g
of which saturated: 0.8g
Fibre: 26.9g
Sodium: 170mg

Food vs. supplement

The B12 question here is the reverse of the usual one. Normally the food has the nutrient and the supplement copies it; with nutritional yeast, the nutrient people rely on it for is only ever there because a manufacturer added it.

Kitchen tip

Stir it in at the end. It needs no cooking, and the savoury note is stronger when it has not been heated hard.

Common myth

“Nutritional yeast is a natural vegan source of B12.” In reality: No yeast makes B12 — it is produced by bacteria, and nothing in a plant or fungal food synthesises it. Where nutritional yeast contains B12, it was added at the factory, and fortification varies by brand. This matters more than it sounds: the very high folate content can hide the blood changes that would otherwise reveal a B12 deficiency, while nerve damage continues quietly.