The flip side: plants and minerals

Lots of plants also means lots of phytates: what you need to know.

This app pushes you to eat a lot of plants, and in particular a lot of legumes, whole grains, seeds and nuts. That is excellent for your bacteria. It has a downside that is rarely discussed, and it is better to know it.

These foods contain phytates (and oxalates, and tannins): molecules that bind to zinc, iron and calcium in the gut and prevent part of these minerals from being absorbed. The higher the share of whole grains and legumes, the more this retention weighs — and plant iron is already the less well absorbed of the two forms. For a menstruating woman, a growing teenager, or someone who eats little or no animal products, it is not a detail.

The good news: it can be defused, and by gestures you may already be making.

• Soaking — a night in water for legumes and nuts, discarding the water in the morning. Part of the phytates goes with it.
• Sprouting — the awakening seed activates its own phytase, the enzyme that destroys phytates. That is why “sprouted” entries exist in the catalog.
• Sourdough — the most effective gesture on the list. The long fermentation of a true sourdough bread massively breaks down the phytates of whole flour, where a quick yeast dough has no time to. A whole-grain sourdough bread and an industrial whole-grain bread are not at all equivalent from this point of view.
• Long cooking, and pairing with vitamin C: a squeeze of lemon, parsley, raw bell pepper in the lentil salad clearly improve the absorption of plant iron.
• Conversely, tea and coffee during the meal slow this absorption — better to shift them by an hour.

This is emphatically not a reason to eat fewer plants. It is a reason to prepare them: in the app, the “soaked”, “sprouted” and “sourdough” entries are separate precisely because they are not the same foods — neither for your bacteria, nor for your minerals.