Bioavailability: what’s your body doing with all the stuff you ingest?

The BBC recently posted this article on “Getting the best out of your food,” interesting for those of us who are interested in more than just the culinary side of eating.

Experts advise us to eat more fruit and veg; boost protein and fibre intake; make sure we get the optimum levels of vitamins and minerals.

But what actually happens to these nutrients once they are inside the body?

Anyone who’s been vegetarian for ten or more years, and possible some of you who aren’t, will remember the mix-craze, where it was recommended that vegetarians mix certain foods to obtain proteins and other important foody nutrients we were otherwise supposedly losing out on. Those days have pretty much passed, with the realisation that vegetarians do get mostly what they need in terms of nutrition, provided the diet is a varied one. This article reminds me of those days, only on a far more logical scale; there’s no matter-of-fact statement that in order to be healthy, you have to combine this with that, etc…

Instead, the article provides a brief but informative look at how our body takes in certain minerals and nutrients, and what cooking processes and combined foods may or may not increase this absorption.

Read all about it!

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.