Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, there, it's Jen, and welcome to this week's podcast. So this week we're going to be talking about anti-nutrients. Now, don't worry, if you haven't heard that term, I will let you know what it is really soon. But we're going to be talking about anti-nutrients and whether they block absorption of iron and zinc, so whether we need to be worried about them or not. Absorption of iron and zinc so whether we need to be worried about them or not. Now, before I get started, I wanted to let you know that my new recipe book is up for sale. I've been talking about it a lot and so I want to make sure that you know that it's there. So it's called Super Boosted Snacks. It's got over 70 plant-based recipes.

Speaker 1: 0:43

But the really great thing about it is the recipes have been specifically developed by me, a vegan nutritionist, to be really high in iron and zinc and calcium and protein, so they're really high in the nutrients that your kids really need, and you as well. Um, these aren't just kid snacks, trust me. They're adult ones too. I eat them all the time, but yeah, so they've been developed to be really tasty, so your kids will really like them, and really high in nutrients. I mean some of the chocolate puddings in there that I've got. I've got like four, five, even seven milligrams of iron in them, so they are absolutely packed full of the nutrients that your kids need. They're also super quick and easy and the book comes with a full freezing guide so you'll be able to freeze all the snacks so you can always have them on hand. And then it's got a bit of information about nutrition as well. But, yeah, so make sure you check that out. I've got the link to it down below and people are loving it, which is really exciting. So, yeah, make sure you grab a copy. It would make a great Christmas present too. I can't believe we're coming up to Christmas. Yeah, that's really coming soon, isn't it? So yeah, so make sure you check that one out below.

Speaker 1: 2:07

All right, so let's get into anti-nutrients Now. Don't worry if you don't know what I mean by anti-nutrients, that's okay. I've kind of talked about this with a few vegan friends and stuff and half know what I'm talking about and the other half don't really know what I'm talking about. But one of the really big criticisms that you'll see about a vegan diet is that anti-nutrients block the absorption of iron and, in particular, zinc. So a bit of iron, but really they block zinc absorption from foods. And so today I really want to talk about is this true, is this actually real, or is it just one of these paleo world stories that comes up? Do we need to worry about it as vegans, and what do we do about it to make sure that you're getting all the iron and zinc that you need? All right, so what do I mean by anti-nutrients?

Speaker 1: 3:13

So, basically, for quite a long time, they've been talking a lot about various things like phytates, or phytic acid is one of the most common ones that we talk about or that you hear about, and it's particularly associated with zinc. So, yeah, so that's one of them. Then you've got other things, sorry, so today I'm going to be focusing mostly on phytates, or phytic acid when we're talking about this and, in particular, about zinc, but there are some other ones. So there's also oxalates come under the term of anti-nutrients tannins, which are in tea. There's also lectins, and then there's a whole lot of other ones that, to be honest, you probably haven't heard of many of them, of other ones that, to be honest, you probably haven't heard of many of them, but they're all sort of basically things in plant food which are known to lower the absorption of iron or zinc. So, pretty much, they're built in defense mechanisms in the plant which are made to, uh, protect the plant from being eaten and stuff which sounds it.

Speaker 1: 4:31

I always find it a bit funny, um, talking about this sort of thing as a vegan, cause you know it's very different talking about these things in plants versus, um, things in animals, but it can be a slippery slope sometimes if you really start to think about it. Um, obviously, yeah, they're not. Um, it's vegan, anyway, yeah, so, basically, yeah, there are different things in foods which are known to block absorption of nutrients like iron and zinc. So for a very long time, we've been taught to soak our foods in order to reduce these in our foods. So you've probably heard about the whole soaking of seeds, soaking of grains and things like that, which are there to then increase absorption of things like iron and zinc in them and decrease the things like phytic acid in them. So, yeah, that's basically what we've been taught for a very long time, and I guess one of the problems, um, that there's always been with this whole need to soak foods and everything is that it's also one of the things. That makes vegan, a vegan diet, um seem like it has a lot more effort that we need to be.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Yeah, I mean, as a busy mum myself, the very idea of having to soak all the grains and legumes as well, and nuts and seeds, before I eat them. Let me tell you, I did it once. I soaked some cashews overnight and then they looked really slimy and gross and so I didn't actually end up eating them, and that was basically the only time that I ever oh no, no, sorry, I tell a lie, I tell a lie. So that was one time I soaked them in the fridge, and I soaked them that time in the fridge, because the time before that I soaked them out on the bench when and this was when my youngest, my eldest, was very young. So I soaked the cashews in water and they I didn't get to them, being a busy new mum Um, I didn't get to them for a day or two and, um, they ended up going moldy. So that completely wasted my um entire packet of cashews. So, yeah, that was the. I basically gave up.

Speaker 1: 7:14

Um, as I said, I did try it one other time in the fridge and they were all slimy and I just couldn't do it. So, yeah, I have never soaked grains or legumes or nuts or seeds or anything. I just I don't have time to do it. So I've always kind of gone well, I'll just have to deal with all those anti-nutrients getting to me, so yeah, so anytime I put a post up on Instagram or Facebook or anything about how much iron you need and or how much zinc you need and how to get it and stuff in a vegan diet and how to get it and stuff in a vegan diet, without fail, I will get somebody coming up and telling me that you can't be vegan because of the anti-nutrients. So I had this happen recently and I decided that I'm going to do this podcast and talk about it and stuff, because the whole thing about anti-nutrients is actually sort of a little bit.

Speaker 1: 8:20

There's two things about it that kind of annoy me. First off, when they put the dietary guidelines and everything together, the experts who do nutrition and everything actually already know about this. So I find a lot of the time you get, uh, cause all of this anti-nutrient stuff? Um, I think it all came through with the paleo diet. It's one of the reasons why they don't, um, promote grains or legumes. Um, it's really one of the big ones that, uh, the misinformation that talks about why legumes aren't good for you. But something that I find a lot of the time is that these people who are sort of your paleo type people and everything, seem to think that they're the first people who've actually come across this and that it's never actually been considered before and that no one else knows this and so they have to tell us all about it.

Speaker 1: 9:18

And the thing is that if you actually look in the recommendations, obviously these are the recommendations I'm talking about have been written for professionals, so I'm not meaning that you need to understand them, but it's clearly written for any nutrition professional or dietitian or anything. When you look up how much zinc people need, it actually says that vegans and people on plant-based diets need to be looking at having up to 1.5 times more zinc than they recommend for omnivores because of the phytates and other things that make zinc absorption harder from plant-based foods. So, like in all of my courses and everything in my membership that I've got, now that you can access all of that, everything I teach, I do teach that you need to be aiming for 1.5 times more zinc than iron. The same as this is why, even though everyone talks about iron so much, zinc is actually more important, and so that's one of the reasons why I also tell people to focus on zinc, and the iron actually looks after itself. And so, yeah, we kind of we already know all this and it's already there, it's already known and it's already a recommendation for vegans anyway recommendation for vegans, anyway.

Speaker 1: 11:04

The other really interesting thing is that so nutrition science is very new, and so we're discovering a lot of stuff all the time, and one of the things that they're now discovering is that these so-called anti-nutrients are actually really good for us. So things like phytic acid is actually. It has anti-cancer properties, it's anti-inflammatory, and then all these other nutrients as well, like they've been found to be well, like they've been found to be yeah, reduce cancers. As I said, they can be protective of our hearts as well. They can help with our immune system. Yeah, it's just so.

Speaker 1: 11:47

There's so many good properties of all these anti-nutrients that, ironically, if we go and soak them soak all the foods to get rid of them or to lessen them, soaking doesn't completely get rid of them. Well then we're actually missing out on all of these amazing benefits of these foods. So it seems that the answer isn't actually to soak your foods, to get rid of these or to reduce them as you need in order to have both the benefits of the so-called anti-nutrients and also the zinc and the iron and everything that we need as well, which, in my book, I mean, is an even greater vote for a vegan diet, really, if you think about that, yeah. So I guess, moving on to the question that I've kind of already answered, do these anti-nutrients actually block some absorption of iron and zinc? And the answer, unfortunately, is yes. So they are right and it does lessen the absorption of those nutrients.

Speaker 1: 13:16

So that does mean that you need to be aiming for, as I said, one and a half times as much zinc in your diet than the recommendation says, which, yeah, unfortunately but I mean zinc foods are reasonably easy to get on a vegan diet. So you're looking really at nuts and seeds legumes in order to make sure you're getting enough. Luckily, younger kids don't actually need that much, so young kids need about three or four milligrams, which, if you put it up to the 1.5, so you're looking at four and a half to six milligrams of zinc, which isn't so bad, but zinc you really do need to be careful of making sure that teenage boys and adult males are definitely getting enough, because they have really high needs and by the time you put it up to 1.5 times, you're ending up getting close to about 20 milligrams a day. So you need to be really, really intentional on making sure that they're getting enough and making sure that you're including things like nuts and seeds. Now I've put a link to my vegan kids nutrition guide down below, so it's a really good guide where I go through each of the top five nutrients that you need to focus on, and that does include zinc and iron, and so it tells you how much you need to focus on. And that does include zinc and iron, and so it tells you how much you need, and it also tells you what the best kid-friendly foods are to make sure that you're getting enough. So make sure that you grab that from down below so that you get a really good idea of how much zinc your kids need.

Speaker 1: 15:12

So I'm basically basically talking here about phytates, as I said, and about zinc, but I was also mentioning earlier about iron as well, so you're probably wondering do you need to have 1.5 times as much iron as well as the zinc, and the answer is no. So basically, iron and zinc are a little bit different. So in our bodies we have more mechanisms to be able to absorb iron. We also have things like adding vitamin C to foods, avoiding like spacing out tea and coffee and things like that Not that that really is relevant for kids, and also. So onion and garlic have also been found to increase iron, and our bodies have got sort of mechanisms to increase or decrease iron, depending on how much we need to absorb. If you want to learn more about iron and stuff, I've got a couple of podcasts that I've done all about it, so make sure you go back and listen to those. But yeah, so basically our body has more mechanisms to adjust iron absorption, whereas zinc, we don't have as many.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Now the other thing is it's really easy to actually measure how much iron we have in our body, so you're able to go get a test and see and it will give you a really good, accurate picture of how much iron is actually in your body, whereas zinc, it is really difficult to measure how much zinc is in our body and to measure whether you're zinc deficient or not. So when you go and you get a blood test for zinc, it really only gives you an idea of whether you've been having much zinc recently. It doesn't give you a good idea of the zinc stores in your body. So you could get a good result in your blood test, but in reality, your stores might be quite low and so you might actually be deficient. So, because it's a lot harder to be able to tell whether we're getting enough zinc, and also because our body has more ways of absorbing more iron, our body has more ways of absorbing more iron. So that's why the recommendations focus specifically on making sure you're getting one and a half times as much zinc rather than iron.

Speaker 1: 17:58

So, in order to wrap up, the question is do we, as vegans, need to worry about anti-nutrients? The answer is yes, we do. We need to be aware of them, but the reality is that they're actually good for us. So, rather than trying to avoid them or having foods like meat and dairy and things which don't contain them for our iron and zinc, it is much better to have the plant foods that provide us with iron and zinc and to make sure that we're having enough to provide us both with the iron and zinc that we need and also to give us the benefits of these other nutrients. So, as I said, make sure that you download that guide below, because it will tell you exactly how much iron and zinc and calcium your kids need, and it will also give you a list of really great foods you can include to make sure that they're getting enough. Alrighty, so that's all for this week. Next week we're going to be talking about protein, so make sure you tune in for that one.