9 Ways to Absorb Your Nutrients More Effectively

If you want to gain muscle, you need to make sure you're absorbing enough nutrients, not just eating a lot of protein and calories. This is especially important if you are trying to lose weight because you will be eating smaller portions. It is essential that you absorb as much of the nutrients from the food as possible.

There are now many different tools that you can use if you want to improve your ability to absorb information. Take a look at these.

Ways To Absorb Your Nutrients More Effectively

Here are some tips on how to get the most out of your food in terms of nutrition.

Meditate

That’s right, we’re starting with a weird one. This approach is much more scientific than you may realize, and pro bodybuilder Ben Pakulski loves it. A good way to avoid losing your temper is by counting to ten. In a nutshell, meditating (or “counting your breaths for a few minutes” if that sounds too woo-woo) helps to calm your nervous system.

This activates your vagus nerve, the longest nerve in the body, which runs from your brain to your stomach. Stimulating the vagus nerve (increasing your “vagal tone”) puts your body more in a “rest and digest” (parasympathetic) state than a “fight or flight” (sympathetic) state, which has tons of benefits like better nutrient absorption and insulin secretion. When you relax, your body interprets this as a signal that there is no danger and it can allocate energy to processes like digestion.

Vitamin C

This is easier to do and especially important if you are eating a lot of plants. Iron from plants or eggs (called “non-heme” iron) doesn't absorb as well as iron from meat. You can improve the absorption of iron in your body by eating it with a source of Vitamin C. If you drink a lot of tea or coffee, you may absorb less iron. This is especially important to consider.

Soaking or sprouting your grains and legumes before cooking them can help reduce the amount of phytic acid. Pairing phytic acid with Vitamin C leads to better absorption of these nutrients. Eat fruits or veggies with your meals to get the most benefit.

Black Pepper Extract

If you happen to own a lot of vitamins or pre-workouts, it's likely that you've seen Bioperine® in the list of ingredients at some point. Piperine is the molecule people are trying to get, and evidence suggests it can prevent enzymes that might interfere with the digestion of certain nutrients.

Piperine is often added to supplements containing curcumin or green tea in order to improve the absorption of their anti-inflammatory compounds, as a few studies have found it to be effective in doing so. Some research has found that piperine increases curcumin's absorption by up to 2000%.

There’s less research on piperine boosting, say, vitamin absorption, and while it seems to help prevent excessive levels of some drugs in the body it also reduces the effectiveness of others, so chat to a doctor before taking it.

Probiotic Supplements

To improve the health of your gut microbiome, you can eat fermented foods or consume probiotic supplements. These organisms help you to digest and break down food, and it’s easy to damage your microbiome with insufficient sleep, not eating enough fiber, or just being stressed out.

The absorption and utilization of proteins and other nutrients can be increased by taking certain probiotics, according to research. If you want to maintain a healthy gut microbiome, consume plenty of fiber, especially prebiotic fiber. Prebiotic fiber is found in garlic, onions, bananas, and asparagus, among other places.

Eat Slowly

If you clean your plate before anyone else, you may not be getting as much nutrients as you could. The 2009 study found that those who chewed their almonds more thoroughly absorbed more fat and energy from the meal.

Eat Enough Fat

A lot of vitamins, including A, D, K, and E, are more effectively absorbed when taken with fatty acids. You should consume some fat with vitamins that are in supplements to help them get into your bloodstream.

Cook (Some of) Your Food

The amount of nutrients lost from cooking can vary greatly, from 15 to 55 percent. When you boil food in water, you typically lose the most nutrients.

But some foods deliver the most nutrients when cooked.

For example, cooking:

significantly increases the bioavailability of lycopene, found in tomatoes. Research shows that lycopene increases by 25 percent when tomatoes are boiled for 30 minutes.
significantly increases the bioavailability of beta carotene, found in red/orange/yellow plants like tomatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, and spinach. Cooking helps here by breaking down the plant's cell walls.
denatures protein in eggs and meat, making them much more digestible.
makes iron and other minerals more available for absorption by decreasing oxalates, an acid that makes the minerals inaccessible by binding to them.
reduces certain harmful food components, such as cyanide (found in yuca) and possible anti-nutrients (found in grains and beans), making way for all the good stuff those foods have to offer.

Remember that boiled potatoes are always a healthier choice than French fries.

This means that cooked foods may be better for you than raw foods, much to the dismay of raw food fans. Cooking increases the bioavailability of beta carotene (which converts to Vitamin A and is found in tomatoes and carrots), it decreases oxalates (which make iron harder to absorb), and it makes the protein in eggs and meat easier to absorb.

Some methods of cooking may reduce the amount of vitamins present in food. This is controversial because the jury is still out on whether or not this is actually the case. Boiling broccoli for too long can cut the Vitamin C content by 50 percent, because it leeches out into the water. Even microwaving might take away about 25 percent of the Vitamin C. Its easier to just eat a lot of plants to make sure you're getting enough nutrients, cooked or not.

If you boil vegetables, save the liquid to use for something like soup stock. You can eat the nutrients later and they are not “lost”.

Get Enough Sleep

Poor sleep means poor, well, everything. It disrupts a range of hormones that are involved in stress, blood sugar, and how well you absorb nutrients.

A review of 26 studies found that there is a strong correlation between low amounts of nutrients and sleep deprivation. Getting at least 7 hours of sleep per night impacts almost every area of your health.

Eat Locally Grown Food

You can get the most vitamins and minerals from your produce if you eat locally grown food that is straight from the earth.

The process of separating them from their nutrient source is referred to as plucking. The more time that passes after they are picked, the more nutrients they lose.

The vitamins in “fresh” fruit and vegetables may degrade by 15-60 percent before you purchase them at the grocery store, unless you eat them within 72 hours of harvest.

When it comes to nutrients, local is more important than organic vs. traditional. Eating food from local farms or farmers markets is a good way to get nutrient-dense food.

My only problem: I live in New Jersey. And not the “Garden State” part, either. A neighbor of mine refers to Shop Rite as “Shop Wrong”, due to it being much more convenient than our local farmer's market.

Plus, there’s winter. Although there is a lack of fresh produce in the American northeast from November to June, there is still a decent amount.

There are many ways to get the most nutrition from the food you eat without having to sell your home and move out to the country.

Soak, Chop, Crush, Blend

These basics of food prep can make vitamins, minerals, and other compounds more available in a few ways:

Cutting up fruits and vegetables generally frees up nutrients by breaking down rigid plant cell walls.
Crushing and chopping onion and garlic releases alliinase, an enzyme in these foods that helps form a nutrient called allicin. Allicin, when eaten, helps form other compounds that may protect us against disease.
Soaking grains and beans reduce phytic acid, which might — in part — block your absorption of iron, zinc, calcium, and magnesium.

If you’ve already been doing these things, great. Now you know why they work.

Store Fruits and Vegetables the Right Way

When thinking about storage, balance two things:

Make it easy to eat your plants: Keep fruits and vegetables where you’re most likely to access them.
Slow down nutrient loss: Heat, light, and oxygen degrade nutrients.

That’s why you should store…

all vegetables — except those of the root variety — in the refrigerator until you need them.
all fruits except berries — this includes tomatoes and avocados — at room temperature away from direct light.
all cut fruits and vegetables with a squeeze of lemon juice on them and in an airtight container. (Cut produce rapidly oxidizes and vitamin C, an antioxidant, slows decay.)
all herbs — with their amazing phytonutrients — are chopped up and frozen in an ice cube tray with water. (Maughan says she sees a lot of clients leave them unused — and eventually unusable — when they’re stored in the produce drawer.)

Eat Most Sources of Water-Soluble and Heat-Sensitive Nutrients Raw

You get more vitamins B1, B5, folate, and C when you eat certain foods raw because heat breaks them down.

Thus, foods like:

sunflower seeds, peas, beet greens, and Brussels sprouts (sources of vitamin B1),
broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and avocado (sources of vitamin B5),
spinach, turnip greens, broccoli (sources of folate), and
bell peppers, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts (sources of vitamin C)

You get the most benefit from vitamins and minerals when you eat them raw.

Raw spinach contains more vitamins than cooked spinach.

The water-soluble vitamins B and C are lost when boiled. To preserve the nutrients in these types of foods, cook them at low heat without allowing them to come in contact with too much water.

This includes:

blanching
steaming
sautéeing
roasting
microwaving

Pair Food Strategically

Many world cuisines put particular foods together. Greens with lemon and olive oil is a type of Italian cooking. The complex spice blends in Caribbean, African, or South Asian cooking is also a type of Italian cooking.

It's possible that through 20,000 years of trial and error, cooks learned that a diet with a variety of foods is best.

If you want to make sure you're getting the most out of the foods you eat, it's important to pair them together correctly. Not only will this make your meal taste great, but it will also help you absorb all the nutrients from the food.

Here are a few examples.