August 17, 2017
Eating healthy is great, but eating optimally is even better. The level of nutrient absorption varies from person to person, and there are many ways to improve your nutrient absorption to squeeze all the goodness you can out of each meal! Today, I’m presenting you with my favourite simple tricks to get a little more nutrition out of my meals.
5 Simple Tricks To Optimize Nutrient Absorption
Chew Your Food
Let’s be honest, how many of us eat on the go, whilst standing or walking or driving, or watching something. We wait too long, we get so hungry, we gulp down our food as fast as we can. If you do this and you notice your digestion isn’t quite what it should be: there’s a reason for that.
Digestion starts in the mouth, making use of both digestive enzymes and your chewing to physically break down each bite into small enough particles for the body to use. The longer you chew the smaller the food particles AND the better the digestive enzymes can do their job.
Gut Flora
The friendly bacteria in your belly also do a lot for digestion, and healthy gut flora can really contribute to optimal nutrient absorption, among other important things.
You can take a probiotic to support your gut flora. Or you can add fermented foods to your ingredient rotation, I love adding sauerkraut or kimchi to salads and buddha bowls, drinking kefir and/or kombucha and regularly eating tempeh as the protein component of my meals.
Iron + Vitamin C
We all know how important it is to get our iron, but did you know that Vitamin C makes iron more bioavailable? The trick is to consume Vitamin C rich foods at the same time as your Iron rich foods. My favourite super simple way to achieve this is by adding citrus juice to my greens, either during cooking or as a salad dressing, so easy!
Soaking Seeds, Nuts & Legumes
Seeds, nuts & legumes are packed with awesome plant nutrients, and should make up a component of any healthy diet. However, these types of foods contain nutrient inhibitors such as phytic acid. In order to get the best out of your nuts, seeds and legumes it’s advised to soak them before cooking or eating. Soaking overnight will neutralize the nutrient inhibitors and give you the maximum nutrition possible.
Turmeric + Black Pepper
Turmeric is really having a moment in the health realm right now, and with good reason: it’s an incredible anti-inflammatory amongst a great many other things.
Curcumin (the beneficial ingredient in turmeric) actually has relatively low bioavailability. Piperine (an ingredient in black pepper) has been found to increases the bioavailability of curcumin enormously. In fact, one study has found that a bioavailability increase of 2000% is possible with just 20mg of Piperine ingested along with 2g of Curcumin.
